Ex-FounderRole OverviewThis isn't a traditional corporate role. It's a creative and operational challenge built for a battle-tested entrepreneur.
Zania is growing at a breakneck pace. We are looking for an ex-founder to act as a co-pilot to our founding team. We don't want someone who needs a playbook; we want someone who has built the playbook from scratch before. You will operate as a true generalist and founder proxy-taking on our most critical 0-to-1 initiatives, driving aggressive growth experiments, and managing strategic investor relations.
If you are a former founder looking to join a deeply technical, hyper-growth rocketship and get your hands dirty building a generational company, this is your arena.
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 ApplySkip 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.
The bar is simple: Does this memo prove you have founder-level clarity, grit, and strategic taste?
LocationBased in (or willing to relocate to)
Palo Alto, California, working in-person with the team five days a week.
Compensation & Benefits- Flexible PTO policy
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Meals and snacks in the office
- Relocation support
