About Protocol Labs
Protocol Labs is an innovation network of 750+ teams, projects, and movements with a common mission: to drive breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward. We operate as an innovation network that helps breakthrough technologies move from bold R&D into real-world adoption — supporting pioneering teams across funding, mentorship, and deep network access to bring transformative products to market. Our network has supported projects such as IPFS, Filecoin, and libp2p, as well as emerging efforts in neurotech, AI, and digital rights. Our key focus areas include digital human rights, upgrading economies and governance systems, safe AI, and neurotech. For more, see Juan Benet's talk from PL Summit 2023 and the 2024 PL Summit Video (Remote Update).
About Polaris
Polaris is the platform team for the Protocol Labs Network. We build the programs, tools, events, and connective tissue that help PL's founders, researchers, and investors find each other, work together, and win. Like the platform function at a leading venture firm — but at the scale of an entire innovation network — we are how PL delivers value beyond capital. We run member admissions, network programming, founder services, focus area programs, and the underlying data and tooling that make it all work.
About the Role
We're hiring a Platform Lead to own and scale Polaris. This is the senior platform leadership role for the Protocol Labs Network — equivalent in scope to the Head of Platform role at a top-tier venture firm, with a remit spanning community, programming, talent, business development, founder services, and member growth across hundreds of network teams.
You will be the senior operator accountable for everything our members experience outside of capital itself: how they're admitted, onboarded, introduced, supported, and developed over the lifetime of their relationship with PL. You'll lead the Platform, Programs, Marketing, and Engagement teams, set the strategy and operating cadence across them, and represent the platform function to Juan Benet (your manager), PL Capital, and the broader PL leadership team.
This is a builder's role. Polaris has strong foundations and a growing network, and we're looking for a leader who can take it to the next level — sharpening what we offer members, raising the bar on quality, and building the systems that let it scale.
What You'll Own
- Member experience and the network journey.
- Own the end-to-end experience of being a PL member — from how people are admitted, to how they're matched and introduced, to how they engage with programming and one another over time. Define what "great" looks like at each stage and build toward it.
- Programming and events.
- Oversee the calendar of summits, retreats, fellowships, residencies, office hours, and capital programs that bring the network together. Make sure each one has a clear purpose, hits a high bar, and produces measurable outcomes for members.
- Founder and team services.
- Build the portfolio services layer - business development and customer introductions, fundraising support, operational resources, vendor partnerships, and access to experts and advisors. Curate what's worth offering centrally and what's better delivered through the network itself.
- Community and engagement.
- Steward the culture, rituals, and growth loops that make the PL network feel like a network — not a directory. Drive member activation, deepen engagement among the most active members, and design re-engagement loops for the rest.
- Platform tooling and data.
- Set the product direction for the software that powers all of the above — member identity and the network graph, discovery and matching, messaging and office hours, reputation, and incentive rails. Build what matters and retire what doesn't.
- Measurement and reporting.
- Define the KPIs that capture network health and member outcomes — activation, engagement, retention, collaboration, capital deployed, and outcomes produced. Build the dashboards and the reporting rhythm that let PL leadership see what's working. Communicate impact clearly to leadership and to the broader network.
- The Polaris team.
- Lead, develop, and grow a cross-functional team across product, programs, marketing, and operations. Set the bar on hiring and on the standard of work.
What We're Looking For
Experience
- 12–15+ years of relevant experience, with a senior leadership track record in VC platform, accelerator, or innovation-network leadership — ideally as Head of Platform, Head of Network, or equivalent at a respected venture firm, accelerator, or comparable institution.
- Deep fluency across the canonical platform pillars: talent, business development, community, marketing and content, fundraising support, and portfolio services.
- Proven Product Leadership. Comfortable owning a software roadmap alongside programs and community — partnering with engineering and data, making prioritization calls, and shipping platform tools that members actually use.
- Proven success scaling networked, marketplace, or community products with strong flywheel dynamics — discovery, matching, reputation, retention.
- Experience running rigorous measurement and experimentation programs, and making resource decisions grounded in data.
- Track record leading and growing cross-functional teams across programs, product, engineering, and operations.
- Comfort operating in complex, decentralized, or multi-stakeholder environments.
Skills & Capabilities
- Strong product instincts: prioritization, sequencing, scoping, and knowing when to build vs. buy vs. defer vs. kill.
- Exceptional operator: tight execution, clear cadence, structured decision-making.
- Excellent communicator — concise decision docs, sharp portfolio reviews, and credible storytelling to leadership and the broader community.
- Fluent in incentive and mechanism design as it applies to community, marketplace, and platform products.
- Comfortable owning a budget and making sharp resource allocation calls across software, programs, and people.
- Leads through influence, manages ambiguity, and balances exploration with execution.
- Strong network and reputation in the venture, startup, or innovation ecosystem.
Mindset & Approach
- Sees structure and opportunity in complexity; designs mechanisms that scale trust.
- Balances rigor and pragmatism — comfortable with "good enough to test" while maintaining long-term standards.
- Deep belief in decentralization as a coordination advantage.
- Curious, experimental, and mission-driven.
Why Join Us?
This is the platform role at the scale of a global innovation network. You'll design how world-class founders, researchers, and investors find each other and collaborate on humanity's hardest problems — across digital human rights, safe AI, neurotech, and the systems that underpin modern economies and governance.
If you've built the platform function at a top venture firm and want a much bigger canvas, deeper product surface area, and a mission that goes beyond returns, this is built for you.
You'll join a deeply mission-driven, distributed team that values autonomy, experimentation, and evidence-based decision-making.