Founder's Associate

FOUNDER'S ASSOCIATE
Bidaya · Sharjah · Immediate start

About Bidaya

Bidaya is a UAE business support partner for startups and SMEs. Four divisions — Setup (formation and licensing), Finance (virtual CFO and tax), Digital (brand and web), and Ops (strategy and systems). One team, one relationship, from day one.

We are early. That is the point of this role.

The Role

You will work directly with the founder on the three things that decide whether this business grows: finding the right clients, winning them, and doing the work.

This is not a support role. You will research and open pipeline, build the proposals and decks that win it, and then deliver against the engagements that follow. Some weeks are mostly outreach and research. Some are mostly modelling and writing. Most are both.

The scope is wide on purpose. If you want a defined lane, this is the wrong job.

What You Will Own

• Pipeline. Building and researching the target list, mapping decision-makers, drafting outreach, and keeping follow-up alive until it converts or closes. You will own this end to end.
• Pitch. Discovery briefs, proposals, pricing structures, and decks. You will draft them; the founder will edit rather than rewrite.
• Analysis. Feasibility models, financial pictures, market and competitor research — the substance a client is actually paying for when they buy a strategy engagement.
• Delivery. Real client work across the four divisions. Process documentation, operating systems, research, and the deliverables that come out of an active retainer.
• Meetings. Preparation, attendance, notes, and turning a conversation into a proposal or a plan.

What We Are Looking For

• 0-3 years of relevant experience. Consulting, corporate services, business development, investment, or a startup where you did several jobs at once. Exceptional fresh graduates will be considered.
• You can write. Proposals, briefs, and client emails. Clear, direct, and free of filler. This is the single most important requirement.
• You can build the numbers. Comfortable in a spreadsheet, comfortable defending an assumption.
• Fluent with AI tools. We use them constantly and this role is designed around them. We are not asking you to build anything — we are asking that you already work this way and know where the output needs checking.
• Commercially curious. You should find it genuinely interesting that a marine consultancy, a real estate brokerage, and an art school need three different things from the same firm.
• Self-directed. There is no process waiting for you. Much of the job is deciding what should happen next and then making it happen.
• Able to travel across Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi for meetings.

What This Role Offers

Competitive salary based on experience, UAE residency visa, and health insurance.

Beyond that: proximity. You will sit next to the founder on every commercial decision this business makes — how an engagement gets priced, why a proposal won or didn't, what a client is really asking for underneath what they said. That is a faster commercial education than any graduate programme, and it is the reason this role exists at this stage rather than later.

We are not going to promise a title or a number at six months, because we do not yet know what this business will look like by then. What we can say is that the work is real, the scope is wide, and nothing here is decorative.