The Founder's Associate will manage company operations, support internal tools and projects, and ensure the founders can focus on growth. Responsibilities include CRM management, financial modeling, and project tracking, requiring strong organizational skills and coding experience.
Founder's Associate
The role
What you'll do
Who we're looking for
What it's like to work here
Bonus
About Risely
How to apply
Location: Downtown San Francisco, in-person 5 days a week
Comp: $90-130K cash (incl. variable) plus founding-level equity
Risely is building the agentic operating system for universities. We're live at some of the largest universities in the country and growing fast.
You'll work directly with the founders to support and manage the company behind the scenes. The job is to take the messy operational reality of an early-stage startup and turn it into something that actually functions. Anything that needs an owner becomes yours until someone else picks it up.
Think of yourself as the operating system of the company. The founders are doing customer calls, hiring, fundraising, and product. You're making sure everything else moves: the internal processes, the data, the tools, the follow-ups, the projects in flight, the things that would otherwise slip.
A normal day might look like this:
- Morning: tighten up the financial model
- Midday: build a Claude Code agent that enriches a CRM list
- Afternoon: sit in on a customer call, take notes, own the follow-ups
- Evening: clean up a hiring pipeline with agents
The next day looks completely different. The pace is hours and days. You should be the kind of person who, by 11am, has already finished two things and started a third.
A real mix of ops, internal building, and strategic projects. Some on repeat, a lot of it for the first time:
- Support and manage internal operations. Vendors, contracts, hiring logistics, finance ops, the back office. You keep the machine humming so the founders can stay focused on the rest.
- Actually build internal tools and agents. We run a lot of Claude Code in parallel. You'll write real Python and TypeScript that automates the next manual process: CRM hygiene, prospect research, reporting, internal workflows. Hands-on engineering.
- Own strategic projects end to end. Market research, competitive analysis, hiring sprints, vendor evaluations, special projects the founders need someone to drive. You scope it, do it, ship it.
- Keep the company organized. Notion hygiene, project tracking, meeting prep and follow-ups. You're the reason nothing falls through the cracks.
- Support customer launches. New customer signed? You're in the trenches of every launch: supporting kickoff, coordinating integration timelines, tracking internal handoffs, getting things ready for go-live. Launches are how we turn contracts into ARR.
- Support sales execution. Pipeline research, prospect outreach, deal follow-ups, proposal building, customer recaps, conference prep. The founders run the deals; you're the operator behind them, making sure everything moves.
- Make customers successful post-launch. Sit in on calls, track whether they're getting value, flag issues early, own the operational side of the relationship.
- Be the second pair of eyes. Catch what fell through. Ship the deck. Own the loose ends.
An operator at heart. The kind of person who looks at a chaotic process and instinctively wants to clean it up, document it, and automate the boring parts.
- Master of your own time. You'll have ten things going at once and that feels normal. You prioritize ruthlessly, switch context fast, and protect time for the work that actually matters.
- You actually build. Python, SQL, APIs, scripts that run nightly. You've shipped real code before and you use it every day.
- AI-native. You've built something real with Claude or Cursor and have opinions on where agents add leverage and where they don't.
- Sharp writer. Memos, recaps, internal docs, customer emails. People understand what you mean and act on it.
- Naturally organized. You take notes that you can find later. Things you commit to get done.
0-2 years out of school. You're joining the founding team and the upside reflects that.
Risely is a startup in the truest sense. We are all in. The pace is intense and the work is demanding, and the impact is real.
- In-person commitment. We're in the office together. Building at this stage takes full presence and full focus, and that often means evenings and the occasional Saturday.
- Speed and impact. Your work ships fast and changes how we operate in days, not quarters.
- Mission clarity. Every late night ties back to one purpose: helping students stay enrolled and helping colleges survive a generational shift.
- Ownership from week one. You'll make critical decisions and drive real outcomes from the start.
- Deep, meaningful work. You'll wrestle with real operational complexity inside a fast-moving company. The problems are hard, and solving them changes how Risely runs.
If this excites you, join us at the ground floor. The work will stretch you and demand your best. It will also be the most meaningful work of your career.
Higher education experience or a real interest in fixing how universities run. Something you shipped that real users used. Experience supporting and managing operations, ops-heavy internships, internal tooling work, or any sales / customer-facing experience.
Colleges are in trouble. One in three students drops out today, even after schools spend millions to recruit them. Overburdened staff comb through fragmented data by hand and miss the warning signs until it's too late.
We founded Risely to back the mission of higher education through the biggest systemic and technological shift the industry has ever faced. We build AI digital workers that handle the real operational work universities are drowning in: enrollment, advising, advancement, student services. We deploy them inside the systems institutions already use, and we make them work.
We're live and growing fast. Our customers include R1 research universities and private colleges around the US. We're a small team, YC-backed, well-funded, and building like the future of higher ed depends on us.
Apply below and if you're highly interested, email [email protected] with a paragraph on why this role and a link to something you've built.
Similar Jobs
Blockchain • eCommerce • Fintech • Payments • Software • Financial Services • Cryptocurrency
Lead the architectural vision for Bizplat, consolidate fragmented services into unified platform systems, design reusable capabilities (case management, workflow orchestration, AI/ML pipelines, event streaming, integration frameworks), drive cross-team technical strategy, set engineering standards, mentor engineers, and partner with business stakeholders to translate operational needs into scalable, governable solutions.
Top Skills:
AirflowGoGraphQLJavaKafkaKubernetesLlmsRubyTemporal
Blockchain • eCommerce • Fintech • Payments • Software • Financial Services • Cryptocurrency
Lead the architectural vision for Bizplat, consolidating fragmented services into reusable platform capabilities. Design and build core systems (case management, workflow orchestration, AI/ML pipelines, event streaming), drive migrations, set engineering standards, mentor engineers, and partner with domain teams to translate operational needs into scalable, governable solutions.
Top Skills:
Agentic ArchitecturesAi/Ml PipelinesAirflowCase ManagementContact Center PlatformsEvent StreamingGoGraphQLJavaKafkaKubernetesLlmsRubyTemporalWorkflow Orchestration
Blockchain • eCommerce • Fintech • Payments • Software • Financial Services • Cryptocurrency
Lead architecture and scaling of finance technology across Accounting, Tax, Treasury, Procurement, and FP&A. Design data models and integrations for Oracle Fusion, build SQL/PLSQL-based integrations and web services, embed AI-assisted development, automate financial workflows, and translate accounting requirements into scalable technical designs and documentation.
Top Skills:
ClaudeCursorEnterprise LlmsGithub CopilotGoJavaJSONOracle BipOracle FahOracle FusionOracle GlOracle SlaPl/SqlPythonRestSoapSQLXML
What you need to know about the NYC Tech Scene
As the undisputed financial capital of the world, New York City is an epicenter of startup funding activity. The city has a thriving fintech scene and is a major player in verticals ranging from AI to biotech, cybersecurity and digital media. It also has universities like NYU, Columbia and Cornell Tech attracting students and researchers from across the globe, providing the ecosystem with a constant influx of world-class talent. And its East Coast location and three international airports make it a perfect spot for European companies establishing a foothold in the United States.
Key Facts About NYC Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 549,200; 6% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Capgemini, Bloomberg, IBM, Spotify
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, Fintech
- Funding Landscape: $25.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Greycroft, Thrive Capital, Union Square Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Tiger Global Management, Tribeca Venture Partners, Insight Partners, Two Sigma Ventures
- Research Centers and Universities: Columbia University, New York University, Fordham University, CUNY, AI Now Institute, Flatiron Institute, C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, NASA Space Radiation Laboratory
