Location: United States

Employment Type: Contract

Team: AI Fund

Who We Are:

AI is the new electricity. Just as it transformed entire industries 100 years ago, AI is poised to do the same today. AI Fund is a venture studio that was formed to be at the forefront of this revolutionary wave. We harness artificial intelligence to create innovative solutions for the big challenges of today. With the collective aspirations of our co-founders, we build companies from inception to market launch. We innovate, ideate, and validate to address some of the most pressing issues in human capital, healthcare, wellness, and other traditional industries.

Founded in 2017 by Dr. Andrew Ng, the $176 million-dollar funded venture studio is backed by top-tier VC firms and investors, and powered by the AI Fund teams’ combined experiences as AI pioneers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and operators.

Why Partner With AI Fund:

We’ve been there. We’ve founded and scaled successful companies ourselves, and we know that creating meaningful startups is really hard. Many entrepreneurs toil with ideas for years. Many spend time building something without the foresight of limiting factors that could have been easily dismissed upfront. Accomplished execs often teeter between a desire to start a company and creating something great versus taking a job that is less fulfilling. If only someone could help with taking the risk out of turning an idea into reality and accelerate the company building process, more people would be inspired to start a company.

Coming up with great ideas, sussing them out, assembling great teams, and helping raise capital is what we do. We shorten a process that can take years down to months. We make sure you are going after the right market, are fully validated, and are surrounded by great teammates. Lastly, we make sure you see the world through the lens of a data scientist and machine learning expert, which is the perspective any meaningful company in the future must have.

But we also know that the process is not about us. It’s about great Founders and empowering them to do great things.

What We Seek:

If you’re obsessed with start-ups and building exceptional products, this role is for you! We are looking for passionate entrepreneurs with first-hand knowledge of the problem they have encountered or entrepreneurs that might match to a problem or idea we already have.

It’s not a mandate, but ideally, we want people with experience solving business problems and have a keen eye for anticipating business risks. You may have been a product manager running a product or product line before. You may have been an engineer who has been on the front lines of helping shape a company. You may have been a management consultant who has experience in a particular vertical. Or perhaps you are a proven entrepreneur who recognizes that the difference between success and failure is razor-thin, and you want every advantage you can get.

Lastly, we want people who are leaders. We desire people who can hire great people, get others excited about their vision, raise capital, and make it all happen.

What You Will be Doing:

• The FIR will work with the AI Fund Leadership and Investment Team to launch and scale an autonomous vehicles venture from the ground up.
• Work alongside our staff to iteratively research and validate a problem to solve that can benefit from AI/ML. This includes idea validation, product validation, market validation, and funding validation.
• Design a product and prototype it.
• Set the vision and the strategy of the portfolio company once the idea has been tested and determined product market fit.
• If all makes sense, we capitalize the company to help you start the company up, bring in the best talent, build the product, and get pilot customers.

What You Must bring:

• Proven leadership experience within autonomous vehicles and mobility applications (ridesharing, trucking, transit, UAVs, etc.)
• Practical experience with self-driving hardware (sensors, LiDAR, camera, etc.), infrastructure (cloud or edge), compute, and decision-making software (routing, planning, etc.)
• Clear and concise thinker and communicator; a great story teller.
• Self-starter who will thrive in an ambiguous startup environment.
• Competitive, entrepreneurial mindset.
• Demonstrated experience building products and leading teams.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• Ability to recruit great team members.
• Fundraising experience.

Nice To Haves:

• Collaboration experience with autonomous mobility stakeholders (customers, regulators, supply partners)
• Prior startup founder or experience working at an early stage high-tech company
• Integral part of 0 to 1 growth company
• Advanced degree or equivalent practical experience

Characteristics That We Value:

• Accountability : An obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions while doing so with the highest regard for integrity.
• Leadership : Able to influence others to follow you and lead the team to a brighter future.
• Grit : Able to stick with projects and work hard through good and bad times. High pain tolerance and can perform well under stress or pressure.
• Scrappy : Takes initiative and is proactively able to get things done with low resources, but doing creative things, begging, borrowing, and whatever is needed in an ambiguous environment or situation.
• Ownership Orientation : Demonstrated orientation of extreme ownership over all aspects of the company and extremely results-driven in nature.

At AI Fund, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation, and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. AI Fund believes that diversity and inclusion among our employees is critical to our success as a company, and we seek to recruit, develop, and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Selection for employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

You must already have, or be able to obtain, authorization to work in the country you will work from.

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