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ZaniaZaniaPalo Alto, CA

Ex Founder

Ex-founder to serve as founder proxy and co-pilot to the leadership team at fast-growing AI GRC startup Zania. Drive 0-to-1 strategic initiatives, accelerate growth experiments, manage investor relations, and operate with extreme ownership across revenue, operations, and product.

Salary not listed
On-siteBusiness Operations

About the role

What You’ll Do

  • Drive 0-to-1 Strategic Initiatives: Parachute into the most critical areas of the business—whether that is standing up a new revenue channel, fixing an operational bottleneck, or launching a new product initiative—and build it from the ground up.
  • Accelerate Growth: Act as a high-agency growth engine. You will identify untapped GTM motions, build strategic partnerships, and execute experiments with relentless speed.
  • Manage Investor Relations: Work directly alongside the CEO on fundraising strategy, board deck creation, investor updates, and capital allocation planning.
  • Act as a Founder Proxy: Operate with the authority, context, and extreme ownership of the founding team to unblock teams and accelerate decision-making across the company.
  • Move Fast with High Autonomy: Low friction, high output. You will concept, execute, and iterate on business strategies without waiting for approval chains.

What We Care About

  • Founder DNA: You have been in the driver's seat. You know what it takes to survive, pivot, and scale in highly ambiguous environments.
  • Extreme Agency: You don't wait for permission or perfectly outlined scopes. You find the biggest fire or the biggest opportunity and you own it.
  • Strategic & Tactical Range: You can debate high-level capital strategy with board members at 9:00 AM and manually scrape a lead list or format a customer proposal at 10:00 AM.
  • Execution Speed: You have a ruthless ability to prioritize and an obsession with momentum.
  • Commercial Taste: You know the difference between a vanity metric and a lever that actually moves the needle for enterprise revenue.

Minimum Qualifications

  • Experience as a Founder, Co-Founder, or early executive at a venture-backed or bootstrapped startup
  • Track record of scaling revenue, operations, or product initiatives from zero to tangible traction
  • Deep understanding of B2B/Enterprise SaaS growth dynamics and venture capital operations
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills—you must be able to credibly interact with CISOs, Fortune 500 executives, and Tier 1 investors
  • Financial and analytical fluency to model growth scenarios, build forecasts, and structure strategic bets

How to Apply

Skip the traditional resume. Send us a one-page memo answering one of the following prompts:

  • The Autopsy: What was the biggest failure or hardest lesson from your last startup, and how has it changed the way you operate?
  • The Growth Plan: Outline a highly unconventional, zero-budget GTM experiment you would run in your first 30 days at Zania to capture the attention of enterprise CISOs.

Compensation & Benefits

  • Flexible PTO policy
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • Meals and snacks in the office
  • Relocation support

Skills

B2B SaaSenterprise saasGo-to-Market Strategyventure capitalFinancial Modelinginvestor relations

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