PSL is a startup studio and early-stage venture capital fund focused on the next generation of software and service companies based in the Pacific Northwest. We develop ideas with exceptional entrepreneurs from scratch and validate or kill them (ruthlessly). For the best ideas, we invest significant development work and capital to turn these ideas into venture-funded companies with rapid customer and market adoption. See a few examples here.

Over 5 years and 27 spinouts, we have developed a successful, systematic approach for validating, launching and scaling great ideas. Our team of engineers, designers, marketers and operators is obsessed with supporting and accelerating the work of uncommonly talented founders.

 

We are looking for a Business Lead to come and build great companies. You will work to rapidly advance ideas from their utmost nascency to successful scaled businesses. To do that, you will define and interrogate the hardest questions that these ideas face (you’ll focus on the hard ones first).

 

Most of the time (around 90%) you’ll be the first to tell us why an idea won’t work. The other 10%, you’ll be the first to tell us why it’s the region’s next billion dollar business.

Along the way, you’ll act as an exceptional partner to the founders we serve. Working in conjunction with the PSL Core team, you’ll act as the swiss army knife “dream cofounder”. You’ll talk to hundred of customers and synthesize insights, develop and refine the business model, run digital marketing campaigns to test market pull, and develop company narratives.

You are curious, optimistic yet discerning, and highly autonomous. You absolutely love startups.

 

As our Business Lead, a typical day might include the following . . .

• Act as the “pre-CEO” of a business, catalyzing it from just an idea to a well-defined product with customer pull
• Partnering closely with a founder on whatever problem is keeping you both up at night, whether it be market/product definition, business model or go to market. Owning and drive the schedules key deliverables/milestones to create a venture-scale company
• Run customer interviews to get a deep understanding of the problem to be solved.
• Collaborate with an amazing multi-disciplinary team of developers, designers, growth marketers, data scientists to craft new products with “unique competitive advantages” in their markets
• Develop market and competitive landscapes and devise market entry strategies
• Act as a project manager while transitioning a project to the founder(s) of the business, and managing requirements and a schedule with engineers and designers to ship the initial version to customers
  
  

Signs this might be a fit

• You’ve founded your own company and know what it takes
• You owned and launched a product at a bigger, tech company
• You’re a proven analyst with a keen ability to translate your findings into a narrative
• You have strong in UX, prototyping, customer research, growth, branding or tech chops
• You worked in an early-stage startup or development agency in a product leadership role
• Have seen a product through to product/market fit and customer traction

 

We are an equal opportunity employer and highly value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.