The Best Co-Founder You Could Have
Platform Venture Studio (platformstud.io) is the best co-founder you could have. Created by founders for founders, our tried and true methodology turbo charges startups’ velocity to success.
Our studio team does real work, we don’t waste time, and we’ve been there. Platform’s creators, serial entrepreneur Jeremy Burton and 2020 Midas List investor Tim Connors, have 30+ years of experience developing highly successful startups.
In addition to support from our studio team and other portfolio companies, we have a guild of coaches, investors, and advisors, and ~60K+ Platform’s deep network contacts.
We don't chase fads, and we do no harm. Our mission is to build companies that change the world for the better. Each of our startups aligns with our vision and fits into at least one of our themes: the new economy, climate, social justice, and civic engagement.
About the Founder-in-Residence Role
A Founder-in-Residence (or "FIR") is an entrepreneur we partner with to build a venture-backed company that solves an Unmet Need. Typically, we begin a partnership with a FIR to develop an idea that is still in its infancyPlease review our Founder Deck here for more information: https://decksend.net/d9c55b6bc5a4d5aaIf you have already raised capital, or already found product-market fit and your unit economics work, then you are likely too late for our Founder in Residence program. We do make a select few traditional pre-seed investments in highly thematic companies. If you are interested in pitching for a direct investment, please use Platform's DeckSend tool to send your deck for consideration: https://decksend.net/We recommend reviewing this blog post prior to applying to determine if it makes sense for you to apply: https://www.platformstud.io/blog/why-you-should-not-work-with-platform
About the AI for UX Data Unmet Need (#generativeai)
Understanding early-stage product data is like reading tea leaves. Most founders struggle to understand if the data is right, what it's measuring, and what it's actually telling them. This slows down iteration and finding product market fit.
Few founders are able to self-serve data so they rely on a tech lead to instrument and someone else to build dashboards in Mixpanel, Databox, etc. Whenever the data is reviewed, almost every time there is debate and confusion over whether the data is right, what it is actually measuring, what it's saying, and what it means. On a daily basis, we observe founders struggling with dashboards and/or burning hours watching Hotjar recordings of user sessions, trying to work out what's happening. Also, in the early stages, the product is changing quickly and the dashboards and the understanding of what they are measuring always struggles to keep up with the product.
We believe the maturity of ML/AI presents an opportunity to take a lot of the load off humans to identify UX issues. The first wave of product metrics tools are pretty mature and we've seen the limit of how far they can take people.
We are looking for a founder who is interested in designing a next generation product metric tool to help startups understand their product usage data.
What Platform FIR’s Get
Validated startup idea (in the form of Unmet Need and Solution) with strong chance of success
Initial capital and access to our investor network
Tried and true glide-path to success with specific, measurable milestones
Talented, flexible, remote-first studio team with deep expertise in design, engineering, research, and growth to help you build, launch, and iterate efficiently
Shared ops, HR, and G&A functions—legal, talent, finance, etc
Access to Platform Guild, our network of trusted advisors and subject-matter experts
Coaching all along the way
Who We’re Looking For
“Startup DNA”: You have a tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity, paired with a bias toward action and proactiveness. You are driven to succeed. You are always coming up with new ideas and thinking about ways to make things better. Bonus points if you know how to prioritize your ideas to focus on ones that will move the needle.
Understanding of founder life: You understand both the highs and the lows of the founder journey, and you have the grit and mental fortitude for it (of course, we are here to support you all along the way!). You know that the day-to-day of a founder’s life is not necessarily glamorous. You might have gotten this understanding from starting a company already, being an employee close to a founder at an early-stage startup, or experimenting with your own entrepreneurial projects and initiatives.
Learning ability and growth mindset: You possess strong self awareness, situational awareness, and the capacity for critical self-reflection. You’re not afraid to ask for help, and you’re open-minded, curious, and eager to learn from others. You are able to objectively analyze and communicate your decisions, actions, and their results; process external feedback and other perspectives; and quickly adapt with new information.
Passion for our themes: You agree with the quote: “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution” (from Uri Levine at Waze). At the end of the day, you care most about solving a real problem in spaces that matter, and making an impact for those with a deep Unmet Need within our current four themes: new economy, climate, social justice, and civic engagement.
Goodness: You have low ego and high integrity. You’re motivated by wanting to change the world for the better. You do what is right. You are collaborative and communicative. You treat your customers, your team, and your advisors with utmost thoughtfulness. You are able to inspire others to goodness.
Please get in touch and tell us more if you feel you are uniquely qualified to solve this problem as a Platform Founder in Residence.
this is a full-time position.
UX leader, strategist, designer/researcher @ in-between jobs (aka non-compete clause)
While I support this idea of identifying UX issues with quant pathing, this red market is competitive with slow juggernauts, right? From Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, to Medallia, Qualtrics, and all those CX/DX platforms. The "secret sauce" will be how AI may build smarter brains (ie "bayesnets") faster than UX experts or wannabes to provide contextual dictionaries for the user's digital behavior LLM- or as I say in layman's terms to PMs and engineering 'numbers only make sense with human stories explaining why they matter'. Any startup would lose out on implementing this AI platform as speed to market, so hopefully there is a blue ocean most (including me) are not seeing yet?
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
There's some good discussion happening over on the original unmet need: https://os.platformstud.io/guild/unmet_needs/identifying-ux-problems-in-early-stage-startups-is-too-hard-by-jeremy-burton
The core question will be whether the unmet need for a small, early stage product is just a pure subset of the bigger established solutions like Google Analytics, etc, or whether there are differences that support a new solution.
My own anecdotal observation is that most pre-seed/seed startups can't use these tools effectively because they lack the resourcing and bandwidth to do so. No one has the time to look and manage it, and the product is changing so rapidly that instrumentation breaks and is not updated, people lose track of what different things mean, etc.
So, if a solution existed that could push (vs pull) problems to founders and tell them what the issue is, I would recommend it to all of my founders.
I am very interested in bringing my idea for an AI driven B2B SaaS product to Platform and would love to discuss how we get started.