Founder-in-Residence/CEO (Autonomous Drone Navigation)

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 are backed by a $176 million-dollar fund from top-tier VC firms.

Together, let’s build great companies that will move humanity forward.

About the Idea: AI Fund is pioneering a revolutionary autonomous navigation platform for small and inexpensive drones. The solution utilizes advanced machine vision and a machine learning-enhanced Visual Positioning System (VPS) to enable precise and autonomous drone navigation.

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 we are looking to solve. 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:

• Strategic Direction: Lead the strategic planning and execution, adapting business strategies as market and technology landscapes evolve.
• Product Development Oversight: Guide the product from concept validation to prototyping, ensuring it meets market needs and integrates seamlessly between software and hardware components.
• Partnership Development: Strengthen and expand partnerships to boost market penetration and enhance product offerings, particularly within the DoD ecosystem.
• Team Leadership: Build and lead a diverse team, nurturing a culture that values innovation, flexibility, and execution excellence.

Must Haves For the Role Include:

• Entrepreneurial Experience: Proven leadership in a 0-1 start-up, unstructured, or ambiguous work environments, particularly in roles that demand strategic decision-making and business model innovation.
• Technical Expertise in Embedded Systems: Strong technical understanding of building embedded systems, including proficiency in software development and hardware integration. Must have a solid grasp of computer vision technologies and the ability to oversee complex product development collaboration between software functionality and hardware performance.
• Stakeholder Management: Robust negotiation and relationship-building skills, capable of engaging effectively with a broad range of public sector stakeholders from technical partners to investors.
• Technical and Market Insight: Solid knowledge of the US drone technology and supply chain landscape, including various technical partners, key competitors, and Go-To-Market approaches.
• Leadership and Team Building: Demonstrated ability to assemble and direct teams through the formative stages of a start-up, emphasizing rapid development cycles and agile methodologies.
• Communication Skills: Exceptional ability to communicate and build relationships with internal and external parties across the globe.

Nice to Have Skills Include:

• US Citizenship strongly desired
• Strong DoD network
• Previous experience working with prime government contractors
• Expert understanding of the government procurement process

Characteristics That We Value Include:

• 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.