Ex Founder

Our team includes: AI and Security leaders from Airbnb, Microsoft, Bain & Company, Deloitte, PwC, Brex, and Instacart. Pioneering Technology: Our engineers and GRC experts work at the absolute forefront of applied AI, building the next generation of agentic systems that will define the future of compliance. Hyper-Growth: We have seen 10x ARR growth in the last year and are rapidly expanding. Competitive Compensation & Equity: You will be rewarded like an owner. This isn't a traditional corporate role. It's a creative and operational challenge built for a battle-tested entrepreneur. Zania is growing at a breakneck pace. We are looking for an ex-founder to act as a co-pilot to our founding team. We don't want someone who needs a playbook; we want someone who has built the playbook from scratch before. You will operate as a true generalist and founder proxy—taking on our most critical 0-to-1 initiatives, driving aggressive growth experiments, and managing strategic investor relations. If you are a former founder looking to join a deeply technical, hyper-growth rocketship and get your hands dirty building a generational company, this is your arena.

What You'll Do: Drive 0-to-1 Strategic Initiatives: Parachute into the most critical areas of the business—whether that is standing up a new revenue channel, fixing an operational bottleneck, or launching a new product initiative—and build it from the ground up. Accelerate Growth: Act as a high-agency growth engine. You will identify untapped GTM motions, build strategic partnerships, and execute experiments with relentless speed. Manage Investor Relations: Work directly alongside the CEO on fundraising strategy, board deck creation, investor updates, and capital allocation planning. Act as a Founder Proxy: Operate with the authority, context, and extreme ownership of the founding team to unblock teams and accelerate decision-making across the company. Move Fast with High Autonomy: Low friction, high output. You will concept, execute, and iterate on business strategies without waiting for approval chains.

What We Care About: Founder DNA: You have been in the driver's seat. You know what it takes to survive, pivot, and scale in highly ambiguous environments. Extreme Agency: You don't wait for permission or perfectly outlined scopes. You find the biggest fire or the biggest opportunity and you own it. Strategic & Tactical Range: You can debate high-level capital strategy with board members at 9:00 AM and manually scrape a lead list or format a customer proposal at 10:00 AM.Execution Speed: You have a ruthless ability to prioritize and an obsession with momentum. Commercial Taste: You know the difference between a vanity metric and a lever that actually moves the needle for enterprise revenue.

How to Apply: Skip the traditional resume. Send us a one-page memo answering one of the following prompts: The Autopsy: What was the biggest failure or hardest lesson from your last startup, and how has it changed the way you operate? The Growth Plan: Outline a highly unconventional, zero-budget GTM experiment you would run in your first 30 days at Zania to capture the attention of enterprise CISOs. The bar is simple: Does this memo prove you have founder-level clarity, grit, and strategic taste?

Location: Based in (or willing to relocate to) Palo Alto, California, working in-person with the team five days a week.