You make every company run like a proper firm.
Winning the customer is the loud half of the job, and someone else here does it. This is the other half: making sure that when the customer says yes, the company behind the signature works.
We're looking for one person to build that in every company we start. What happens after the contract is signed, whether the invoice gets paid, whether an enterprise buyer can satisfy themselves we're safe to deal with, and whether any of it still stands up when the person who set it up is busy elsewhere.
The invoice arrives on the day it should. A new customer is live before the end of the month rather than some time in the spring. The security questionnaire goes back the same week instead of stalling the deal for six. Someone answers the phone on a Friday afternoon and knows what they're talking about. Nothing important lives only in one person's head.
Most companies only get there years later, once a serious customer has already walked away from them. We build it into each company in the first weeks instead, while it still costs almost nothing to put in place.
Across a portfolio it repeats. Five companies each write their own contract, invent their own onboarding and answer the same questionnaire from scratch. Someone who has built this properly builds it once, and every company we start afterwards inherits it on day one.
It only works if you'll do the work as well as design it. In the early years you're the person chasing the invoice and writing the onboarding checklist yourself.
Every company needs all of this. None of them needs a full-time person for any one piece of it yet, which is what makes the role work across a portfolio.
Delivery. A signed contract turned into a customer who is live and getting what they were sold. The handover from the person who sold it, and the fact that it takes days rather than months.
Service. Response times, escalation, and who picks up on a Friday afternoon. What a customer experiences after the money has changed hands, run to a standard we'd be happy to publish.
Cash. Runway, burn, and the unglamorous collections work that turns an invoice into money in the bank.
Cost to serve. What a customer costs us in infrastructure, support and time, and therefore what the margin is once you stop rounding.
The paper. Contract templates, the terms we will and won't agree to, data processing agreements, liability caps, insurance. Set once so nobody drafts it from scratch at eleven at night.
Proof we're safe to buy from. Access control, data protection, and whichever certification a buyer's procurement team wants to see before they'll let anyone sign.
The numbers. One model and one reporting pack per company, with the same definitions across the portfolio, so a board meeting is about the decision rather than about whose spreadsheet is right.
The people machinery. Hiring process, contracts, options, onboarding, payroll and the rest of it, built so a new starter is useful inside a week.
Corporate and capital. Cap table, board, statutory filings and the data room. When a company raises or gets bought, the paperwork is already straight.
We'll agree the specifics with you rather than hand them down. This is roughly the shape we have in mind.
Alongside each founding team, working out what running properly means for their business. How a customer gets from signature to live, what we put our name to, and what the next venture should inherit.
The first version running. Customers live within weeks of signing, invoices going out and chased on schedule, and a contract template that doesn't need a lawyer every time.
A standard the next venture starts from on day one. Onboarding, service levels, the paper, the security answers and the reporting pack, all inherited rather than reinvented.
Companies that hold up under inspection. An enterprise buyer gets through procurement without a scramble, and a raise gets through diligence without anything nasty surfacing.
This is a role for a builder of machinery rather than a manager of people. If your reaction to the list below is that most companies never get round to any of it, we should talk.
You've run operations in a software company and built things there that outlasted you, in ways you could point at.
You've taken a customer from signature to live, and you know what has to be in place before the contract is even signed.
You've been on the receiving end of an enterprise procurement and security review, and you know how to stop it eating six weeks.
You've run cash tightly enough to know the runway to the week, and you've chased the invoices yourself when it mattered.
You write things down. Processes you've built survive you going on holiday.
You're happy designing the process in the morning and running it in the afternoon.
You can hold several companies in your head at once and still give each of them a proper week.
You're straight with people. A founder hears from you early, while there's still time to do something about it.
You've taken a company through SOC 2 or ISO 27001 and know what it costs in time.
You've designed an onboarding process and can still remember how many days it took a customer to go live.
You've sat on the company's side of a diligence process and know what gets pulled apart first.
You've owned infrastructure cost as a line you were accountable for, not one you were shown.
You've hired a finance or operations team and know exactly which parts are worth keeping in-house.
We take equity in the companies we start rather than charging fees, and we extend the same logic to the people who build them with us.
A salary that's fair for the stage of the studio. We'll put a number on the table in the first proper conversation and we'd expect you to do the same.
A stake in the studio and in the ventures you help get off the ground. The split is agreed in writing before you start.
Tied to the portfolio getting where it needs to go, agreed with you rather than imposed on you.
Partner here, and whatever a venture needs you to be in front of its customers, its auditors or its investors.
Remote for a lot of it, together when it counts, and inside each company often enough to know how it runs.
Skip the covering letter. We care about what you built, why you built it that way, and whether it still stood up after you moved on.