Founder Associate

Founder Associate

Remote within Europe | Brussels optional | Full-time

Netsa is an early-stage startup rethinking how companies understand candidates before they hire them.

As AI makes execution cheaper, judgment becomes more important. Having the right skills still matters, but increasingly, the difference is in how people use them: what they prioritise, which information they trust, when they act, when they ask for help, and how they respond when the situation changes.

Hiring gives companies surprisingly little direct evidence of that. Netsa changes this by putting candidates inside a realistic, company-specific working day where tasks, messages, meetings, people and competing priorities happen together.

The result is direct signals instead of self-reported ones, richer signals than isolated tests or interviews, and signals grounded in the actual context in which someone would operate.

I’m looking for a Founder Associate to work directly with me across the company as we build Netsa from the ground up.

The role

This is deliberately not a narrowly defined role.

At this stage, what matters changes quickly. One week the biggest problem might be getting in front of the right companies. The next it might be understanding what we learned from candidates, improving part of the product, preparing for an important customer conversation or figuring out something neither of us has done before.

Your job is to help us learn faster, get in front of the right people, and turn what we learn into action.

You’ll operate across the company, wherever you can have the most impact. That could mean:

• researching companies, markets and potential customers;
• identifying the right people to reach and helping turn that research into outreach;
• preparing customer conversations and making sure what we learn from them turns into action;
• analysing how candidates and recruiters interact with Netsa and identifying patterns worth investigating;
• challenging product decisions and helping turn feedback into concrete improvements;
• running GTM, outbound and marketing experiments;
• researching competitors, industries and new opportunities;
• helping with partnerships, events and company operations;
• taking an unclear problem, figuring out what matters and owning it through to execution;
• spotting something that could be better and doing something about it before being asked.

Some of the work will be strategic. Some will be very operational. Often it will be both.

You’ll work directly with me and be close to the customers, product, decisions and problems involved in building an early-stage company.

Who I’m looking for

I care much more about how you operate than about having a particular degree or perfectly matching background.

I’m looking for someone with high agency and good judgment. Someone who sees something that needs to happen and moves it forward rather than waiting for a perfectly defined task.

You should be able to:

• take an ambiguous problem, find the important question and create structure around it;
• challenge assumptions, including mine, when you think something doesn’t make sense;
• go from thinking to doing quickly rather than getting stuck in analysis;
• dig beyond the obvious answer and separate evidence from assumptions;
• communicate clearly and know when to act independently and when to pull someone in;
• notice problems, opportunities and loose ends without waiting for someone else to point them out;
• take ownership from “we should do this” to actually getting it done;
• use AI naturally to move faster, while still applying your own judgment;
• switch between strategic thinking and hands-on execution when the situation requires it;
• learn quickly when you enter territory you haven’t seen before.

Previous startup experience is not required. Neither is a specific degree or career path.

I’m not looking for someone who already knows how to do everything. I’m looking for someone who can figure things out, learns quickly and gets better as the problems get harder.

If you need a highly structured environment, a fixed job description and someone telling you exactly what to do next, this probably isn’t the right role.

What you’ll get

You’ll join at a stage where very little is set in stone.

There are no layers between you and the important problems. You’ll work directly with the founder, interact with customers, get close to the product and see how decisions are actually made as the company develops.

You’ll get responsibility early, room to challenge how we do things and the opportunity to shape parts of Netsa rather than inherit a finished playbook.

You’ll also get exposure across the company rather than being confined to one function. If you want to understand what building a company actually looks like before the roles, processes and answers are obvious, that is a big part of the opportunity.

The trade-off is real: there will be ambiguity, priorities will change, and sometimes we’ll have to figure out the answer as we go.

The role can be done remotely within Europe, with the option to work together in Brussels.

The hiring process

We use Netsa in our own hiring process.

After reviewing applications, selected candidates will be invited to complete a 30-minute Operational Day before the interview.

You’ll step into a realistic Founder Associate working environment where tasks, messages, people, information and competing priorities unfold throughout the day. What you do with them is up to you.

There are no trick questions and you don’t need prior knowledge of Netsa.

• We want to understand how you operate, not just what your CV says about you. At the same time, the Operational Day gives you a chance to experience the kind of environment and problems you would encounter in the role.