Founder In Residence - Ad Tech

Who We Are: AI is the new electricity: Just as electricity transformed numerous industries starting 100 years ago, AI is now poised to do the same. AI Fund is an early stage venture firm founded by Dr. Andrew Ng in 2017. Our portfolio companies utilize AI technology and applications to improve processes and efficiency. The AI Fund team combines their experiences as AI pioneers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, and operators. We’ve just raised a new $190 million fund, from investors like HP, NEA, and Sequoia.
Together, let’s build great companies that will move humanity forward.
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: 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. For NAVI, we are looking for someone with deep experience in the ad tech space and someone who is well-versed in artificial intelligence. We also 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.
About NAVI: Navi is an AI-powered ad placement recommendation tool designed for premium publishers, leveraging first-party user data, historical ad performance, and advertiser goals to optimize targeting in a post-third-party cookie landscape. Navi aims to help high-quality publishers recommend ad placements by unifying audience and product data using large language models (LLMs). The tool is designed to integrate with publishers' existing data platforms and support both human-led ad sales processes. While the adtech market is competitive and technically complex—with challenges in plumbing integration, recruiting experienced talent, and thin margins—the shift away from third-party cookies and the rise of premium programmatic advertising present a timely opportunity.

What You Will be Doing

• The FIR will work with the AI Fund Leadership Team to launch and scale this new business from the ground up. If you're obsessed with startups and building exceptional products this role is for you.
• Work alongside our staff to iteratively research and validate on 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 stand the company up, bring in the best talent, build the product, and get pilot customers.

What You MUST Bring

• Expertise in the Ad Tech industry.
• Technical AI experience.
• Previous 0 to 1 experience as a founder/co-founder of a VC-backed startup required.
• Fundraising experience from investors (VCs, Angels or Corporate VC).
• Demonstrated experience building products and leading teams.
• BA/BS degree or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

• Strategic thinking.
• Self-starter who will thrive in an ambiguous startup environment.
• Competitive, entrepreneurial mindset.
• Demonstrated experience building products and leading teams.

Characteristics 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 proactively gets 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.