Founder’s Associate - AI & New Ventures

I’m looking for someone smart, curious, and resourceful to work with me part-time as I explore a few new business ideas, mostly around AI, technology, brands, commerce, media, and creative industries.

I’ve spent most of my career building early-stage technology companies, and I’m now doing a lot of customer discovery and market research around what I might want to build next.

The biggest thing I need help with is creating more volume and rigor around that process.

That means researching markets, figuring out who I should be talking to, finding the right people at companies, helping with outreach and follow-up, researching competitors, and generally helping turn a bunch of ideas and conversations into something more organized and useful.

Some of the work would include:

Researching companies, markets, competitors, and new products Finding potential customers and the right people within those companies Building targeted outreach lists Doing enough research on people before we reach out that the message is actually relevant Helping draft outreach and follow-ups Keeping track of conversations and open threads Preparing quick background notes before meetings Pulling together what we’re learning from different conversations Looking into new business ideas and figuring out whether there’s actually something there

I’m less interested in someone who just wants to be given a checklist of tasks. I’d love to find someone who gets curious, goes down rabbit holes, has opinions, and comes back saying, “I found something interesting.”

You definitely do not need years of experience. A college student, grad student, or recent grad could be a great fit.

What I care about more:

You’re genuinely curious You’re good at figuring things out on the internet You write clearly and concisely You’re organized and actually follow up on things You’re comfortable reaching out to people You’re interested in startups, technology, and how businesses work You use AI tools well but can tell the difference between useful research and generic AI output You’re comfortable when the answer isn’t obvious

Interest in AI, consumer tech, brands, advertising, e-commerce, media, entertainment, or creative technology is a plus.

The role should be interesting for someone who wants to see what the very early stages of starting a company actually look like. You’ll be pretty close to the thinking, customer conversations, product ideas, and decisions rather than working on some isolated intern project.

If one of the things we’re exploring starts to take off, there could also be an opportunity for the role to grow.

Location: New York City. Flexible, but I’d like to work together in person sometimes.

Time: Roughly 7–15 hours/week.

Pay: $25/hr Potential to turn to full-time once company is created.

To apply

Send me:

A few sentences about yourself and why this sounds interesting. Something you’ve gotten unusually curious about and researched on your own. One company, product, or trend you think is interesting right now and why.