🧭 Founding Operations & Project Lead | Founder’s Associate

Compensation: 2.0% – 2.0%

About Kalmus Labs & Remora

Kalmus Labs is an early-stage technology startup building Remora, an AI-native learning platform that turns books, documents, and information into interactive, personalized learning experiences.

Our vision goes beyond traditional educational software. We want to bring together artificial intelligence, thoughtful design, storytelling, and technology to create a place where people can actively explore ideas, understand difficult concepts, and enjoy the process of learning.

We're building Remora with a small, collaborative team of people who care deeply about what they create. At this stage, joining us means more than contributing to an existing product. It means having a real opportunity to influence how the product evolves, how we work together, and what kind of company Kalmus Labs becomes.

We're looking for people who enjoy building things from the ground up, take their work seriously, think independently, and aren't afraid to experiment, challenge ideas, or take responsibility for meaningful outcomes.

The Opportunity

We're looking for a Founder's Associate & Operations Lead to work directly with the founder and help organize, coordinate, and strengthen the day-to-day execution of Kalmus Labs and Remora.

This is a founding-team opportunity for someone who enjoys bringing structure to complex situations, connecting people and priorities, and making sure important work actually gets done.

As a young startup, we have multiple workstreams moving simultaneously: software development, product design, quality assurance, recruiting, communications, marketing, and preparations for future launches.

Our challenge isn't simply coming up with ideas or setting ambitious goals. It's making sure those goals translate into clear responsibilities, realistic timelines, effective collaboration, and consistent progress.

That's where you come in.

You'll help the founder maintain a reliable understanding of what's happening across the company, identify what needs attention, and make sure decisions and discussions lead to concrete next steps.

You might spend one day reviewing project boards, organizing priorities, and checking in with engineers or designers about outstanding tasks. Another day could involve coordinating interviews, researching a potential partnership, preparing internal documentation, or helping resolve an unexpected operational problem.

There will also be moments when the team has several competing priorities, information is scattered across conversations, or nobody has a completely clear picture of what should happen next.

We want someone who can step into those situations, ask the right questions, organize the available information, and help establish a practical path forward.

This is neither a traditional executive assistant position nor a role limited to project management.

It's an opportunity to become a trusted operational partner to the founder, contribute across different areas of the company, and gradually take greater responsibility as the team grows.

You'll be encouraged to challenge assumptions, suggest improvements, and develop your own approaches rather than simply carrying out instructions.

Ultimately, your contribution will be measured by how effectively you help the organization operate, how much unnecessary friction you eliminate, and how reliably the team turns plans into results.

What You'll Be Working On

Project Coordination & Execution

• Work directly with the founder to translate company priorities, product goals, and roadmap decisions into actionable plans.
• Help define clear tasks, responsibilities, priorities, deadlines, and expected outcomes across different workstreams.
• Monitor progress across Backend, Frontend, Product Design, QA, Creative, PR & Growth, and other teams.
• Maintain a clear overview of ongoing, completed, delayed, and blocked work.
• Follow up proactively with team members to clarify progress, resolve uncertainties, and identify potential delays.
• Help coordinate dependencies between teams so that work progresses in the right sequence.
• Identify unclear ownership, unrealistic timelines, conflicting priorities, and recurring execution problems.
• Support planning, coordination, and follow-up for team meetings and project discussions.
• Turn discussions and decisions into organized action items with clear owners and next steps.
• Prepare concise progress updates highlighting achievements, upcoming priorities, blockers, and matters requiring the founder's attention.

Founder Support & Company Operations

• Collaborate closely with the founder on operational priorities and day-to-day organizational needs.
• Help organize competing priorities and distinguish genuinely important issues from less urgent distractions.
• Research unfamiliar topics, tools, companies, opportunities, processes, and operational challenges.
• Prepare emails, messages, internal briefs, presentations, reports, and other business documents.
• Help maintain organized company records, internal information, shared resources, and working documentation.
• Support coordination across different functions when projects require input from multiple team members.
• Identify operational inefficiencies and suggest straightforward improvements.
• Help establish lightweight internal systems and processes when they improve clarity, productivity, or accountability.
• Support unexpected operational needs and help determine practical next steps when new challenges arise.
• Gradually take greater ownership of operational responsibilities as mutual trust, experience, and organizational context develop.

Recruiting, Onboarding & Team Coordination

• Assist with sourcing and researching candidates for technical, creative, operational, and business positions.
• Help maintain organized candidate pipelines, recruitment records, and interview schedules.
• Support candidate outreach, interview coordination, and follow-up communication.
• Prepare relevant information and documentation for recruiting discussions.
• Help coordinate onboarding for new team members, including access to relevant tools, documentation, and communication channels.
• Support clear expectations around roles, responsibilities, communication, and collaboration.
• Help ensure new contributors understand current priorities and know how to begin contributing effectively.
• Encourage consistent, transparent communication across the team while respecting individual schedules and responsibilities.

Processes, Documentation & Continuous Improvement

• Keep project boards, task management systems, roadmaps, and operational documents accurate and up to date.
• Help establish practical workflows for tracking tasks, identifying blockers, reviewing priorities, and following up on commitments.
• Organize important information so team members can find what they need without unnecessary back-and-forth.
• Identify recurring sources of confusion, duplicated work, missed handoffs, and communication breakdowns.
• Propose improvements that make collaboration easier without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Help document decisions, procedures, responsibilities, and lessons learned as the company develops.
• Explore AI-assisted tools and automation for research, recruiting, planning, writing, organization, documentation, and operational coordination.
• Evaluate whether new tools or workflows genuinely improve productivity before introducing them to the team.

Who We're Looking For

You may be a great fit if you:

• Are naturally organized and enjoy bringing clarity to complicated or poorly structured situations.
• Notice when a task has no clear owner, no realistic deadline, or no defined next step.
• Can turn broad objectives and messy discussions into practical plans.
• Feel comfortable coordinating people with different responsibilities, working styles, and levels of technical expertise.
• Communicate clearly, directly, and respectfully.
• Can ask difficult but necessary questions about progress, deadlines, and accountability without creating unnecessary tension.
• Understand that effective coordination requires both persistence and good judgment.
• Learn unfamiliar subjects quickly and can follow complex discussions without needing to be the technical expert in the room.
• Enjoy solving problems independently and know when an issue requires escalation.
• Can move between research, communication, planning, recruiting, documentation, and operational tasks.
• Take ownership of problems instead of assuming they belong to someone else.
• Are comfortable challenging assumptions, including the founder's, when you have a reasoned alternative.
• Know how to separate genuine priorities from distractions.
• Care about execution and results, not just planning meetings, updating dashboards, or creating reports.
• Are reliable with deadlines, follow-ups, confidential information, and professional commitments.
• Can balance attention to detail with the need to move quickly.
• Understand that some operational work is repetitive, but still essential to keeping an organization functioning.
• Feel comfortable working in an early-stage company where priorities, processes, and responsibilities may evolve.
• Can collaborate with people across different time zones and professional backgrounds.
• Enjoy helping other people work more effectively and don't need personal recognition for every successful outcome.
• Are genuinely interested in technology, AI, startups, product development, or entrepreneurship.
• Use AI-assisted tools thoughtfully to improve productivity without replacing your own reasoning and judgment.
• Want to develop a deeper understanding of how a technology company is built and operated from its earliest stages.

Previous experience as a Chief of Staff, Founder's Associate, Project Manager, or Operations Lead is not required.

We're much more interested in your judgment, reliability, initiative, communication skills, organizational ability, and willingness to take responsibility.

If you've coordinated a university project, organized a volunteer team, managed a community initiative, helped run a small business, or developed a system that made a group of people more effective, we'd love to hear about it.

Experience That Would Be a Plus

We're especially interested in candidates familiar with some of the following:

• Early-stage startups and entrepreneurship
• Founder support and Founder's Associate responsibilities
• Project, program, or product management
• Business operations and operational coordination
• Software development processes and technical teams
• Agile workflows and cross-functional collaboration
• Recruiting, candidate sourcing, and interview coordination
• Employee or contributor onboarding
• Remote and distributed team management
• Project tracking, scheduling, and deadline management
• Internal documentation, process improvement, and knowledge management
• Research, business writing, and operational reporting
• Trello, Jira, Linear, Notion, Slack, GitHub, or similar collaboration tools
• Workflow automation and AI-assisted productivity tools
• Building processes and organizational systems from scratch

You don't need to know every tool or have worked in every area listed above. What matters most is your ability to learn quickly, organize information, coordinate people, and consistently help move important work forward.

How We Work

• Location: Fully remote
• Time commitment: Approximately 15–20 hours per week
• Schedule: Flexible, with no fixed daily working hours
• Team: Small, international, and highly collaborative
• Environment: Direct communication, fast iteration, minimal bureaucracy, and substantial individual ownership

We understand that people have university commitments, other jobs, freelance clients, families, and personal responsibilities.

Our working model is designed to accommodate those commitments. What matters most is clear communication, reliability, accountability, and consistent progress rather than being online at particular hours.

You'll work closely with the founder and other team members, contribute ideas, and have the freedom to shape how you approach your responsibilities.

Because this is a coordination-focused role, it does require somewhat greater responsiveness and more regular communication than some of our other positions.

You'll still have substantial control over your schedule, but you should be comfortable checking in with team members, following up on outstanding work, and helping keep projects moving throughout the week.

This doesn't mean being available around the clock or constantly monitoring messages. We value reasonable expectations, clear communication, and respect for everyone's time.

Because we're still an early-stage startup, you shouldn't expect every task to arrive with an established procedure, clearly defined workflow, or detailed instruction manual.

Sometimes your responsibility will be to improve an existing process. Sometimes it will be to create one. And sometimes the best solution will be to remove an unnecessary process altogether.

You'll have meaningful autonomy in how you approach your work, with opportunities to take on broader responsibilities as your understanding of the company and your working relationship with the founder develop.

Compensation & Equity

Equity-first opportunity | Pre-Seed Stage

• Target equity: Approximately 3%
• Vesting period: 4 years
• Cliff: 1 year

We believe in being completely transparent about the stage we're at and what we can offer.

This position does not currently provide meaningful cash compensation. Kalmus Labs is a self-starting, pre-seed startup, and we're building our products with limited resources.

This opportunity is intended for someone who understands the risks of joining an early-stage venture and is genuinely interested in contributing in exchange for meaningful potential ownership.

Equity has potential upside, but it also carries substantial risk. Startup success, future funding, and the eventual value of equity are never guaranteed.

As Kalmus Labs grows, generates revenue, or secures investment, our goal is to transition strong contributors into paid, long-term positions as soon as the company's financial circumstances allow.

We do not want anyone to feel pressured to accept unpaid work or compromise their financial stability. The opportunity should make sense for your individual situation, expectations, and other commitments.

We value honesty, mutual respect, and transparency, and we encourage candidates to consider these conditions carefully before applying.

Because this position works directly with the founder and touches multiple parts of the company, there is also meaningful room for professional growth over time.

Depending on the individual's strengths, contributions, and the company's future needs, the role could develop toward broader operations leadership, product operations, Chief of Staff, or other management responsibilities.

How to Apply

We'd love to see:

• Your LinkedIn profile, resume, or other relevant professional background.
• Examples of projects, teams, organizations, initiatives, or processes you've helped organize, coordinate, manage, or improve.
• Any experience with startups, university organizations, volunteering, recruiting, operations, leadership, research, or project management.
• Examples of situations where you identified a problem, brought structure to a complicated process, or helped a group of people achieve a goal.
• A short, honest response to the following scenario:

Imagine you've just joined a small remote startup. Several important tasks are overdue, different team members have conflicting priorities, and the founder is spending too much time personally following up on everyone's work. There's no reliable overview of what's blocked or what needs attention.

What would you do during your first week to bring some clarity and get things moving again?

You don't need to write a lengthy business plan. We're interested in how you approach the problem, what you'd prioritize, and how you'd communicate with the team.

Please don't feel the need to write a long, overly polished application.

We would much rather read a few thoughtful sentences that genuinely reflect your judgment, initiative, and way of thinking than several paragraphs of generic corporate language.

We actively use AI tools ourselves and welcome candidates who do the same. What we're interested in is your ability to analyze situations, prioritize effectively, communicate clearly, and turn ideas into meaningful action.

If you enjoy solving organizational problems, helping ambitious teams work more effectively, and taking an active part in building a company from the ground up, we'd love to hear from you!