Funding the Commons is incubating Commons Lab, a newly formed venture incubator building at the intersection of AI and coordination infrastructure. This role is for Commons Lab directly and is being shared via Funding the Commons because that's where our network and community live.
Commons Lab works with institutional partners including Protocol Labs and UNDP's Alt Fin Lab, and backs founders building the systems that govern how value flows in the intelligent economy: programmable funding, privacy-preserving identity, agent-native coordination, and financial infrastructure for emerging markets. commonslab.ai/stack
Our founder pipeline flows from Funding the Commons - a 25,000+ person community, 13 conferences across 4 continents, and 3 builder residencies - into intensive post-residency incubation, with follow-on capital for top performers.
We're hiring a founding leader to own incubation. This is one of the earliest and highest-leverage seats in the company: a role for someone who can combine technical judgment, founder empathy, operational design, and AI-native execution.
Compensation is ~$180K base plus significant founding-team equity in Commons Lab.
SF preferred. International travel required for residencies including Kenya and future locations.
What You'll Own:
- Founder selection: Build the evaluation frameworks, scoring systems, and workflows that determine who we back. Your AI market judgment should distinguish genuine technical edge from products that will be commoditized by the next model cycle.
- Builder residencies: Run intensive residencies with partners like UNDP and BNB Chain. Design curriculum, pair builders with mentors, structure sprint reviews, run demo days, and ensure cohorts produce deployable outputs and real pilots.
- Product-market fit: Help founders move from prototype to product. Scope MVPs, cut unnecessary features, sharpen user value, find pilot partners, and get teams shipping against real timelines.
- The internal operating system: Build the infrastructure behind incubation — pipeline automation, builder tracking, institutional reporting, knowledge management, and decision workflows. We expect you to build these systems yourself using tools like Claude, Cursor, and modern agent frameworks.
Who You Are:
- Deep AI market expertise. You track model capabilities, agent architectures, and infrastructure shifts closely. You know what just became possible, what is about to become possible, and what remains genuinely hard.
- AI-native builder. You use tools like Claude, Cursor, and modern development frameworks to build working systems quickly.
- Founder empathy. You've been a founder yourself, or worked closely enough with early-stage founders to understand what actually helps.
- Product instinct. You've helped early-stage teams find product-market fit. You know how to pressure-test scope, user value, sequencing, and speed.
- High trust, high candor. You can mentor a first-time founder in Nairobi and present to a UNDP programme team in the same week.
Strongly preferred:
- expertise in programmable funding, privacy/identity, distribution infrastructure, or agent-native coordination. Blockchain/crypto literacy. Experience with institutional partners such as UN agencies, foundations, or governments.
Apply at: https://commonslab.ai/join
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