Founder Associate

ABOUT THE COMPANY Valon is building the AI-native operating system for regulated finance, starting with mortgage servicing. We're a Series C company backed by a16z, transforming industries that others have written off as too complex to innovate. Rather than build on top of broken legacy systems, we took a different approach: we built and operate our own mortgage servicing business managing $110+ billion in loans. This wasn't the end goal, it was how we deeply understood the complexity needed to build software that actually works in regulated industries. The results speak for themselves. We've transformed mortgage servicing from a 0% margin business into 60%+ margins while dramatically improving customer experience. Major enterprise contracts are now deploying across the industry. ValonOS is our unified platform that makes every process structured and programmable and it is perfectly positioned for the AI era. When everything flows through one system with rich data, AI agents don't just automate tasks, they continuously improve entire operations. Mortgage servicing is just the beginning of our vision to transform regulated industries and beyond. ABOUT THE ROLE We're hiring a Founder Associate to work directly with Valon's Cofounder and President and executive team on the highest-leverage problems facing the company. This is not a traditional strategy & ops role — it's a generalist seat for someone with uncommon judgment, high agency, and the ability to context-switch across wildly different problem types in a single week. One day you're modeling the economics of a new client deployment. The next you're redesigning an internal process that's breaking at scale. The day after you're drafting a board-ready memo or sitting in a client meeting helping close a deal. You won't specialize — you'll go wherever the most important unsolved problem is. This role is designed for someone early in their career who wants to compress a decade of operating experience into a few years by working at the center of gravity of a fast-scaling company. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own critical cross-functional projects end-to-end — scoping, stakeholder alignment, execution, and delivery. These will span client deployments, internal operations, pricing, AI enablement, and whatever else matters most right now. - Be the COO's force multiplier — synthesize information across teams, prepare materials for executive and board-level decisions, and flag problems before they become crises. - Build new functions from 0 → 1 — when Valon needs something that doesn't exist yet (a process, a team, a system), you'll be the person who figures out what good looks like and stands it up. - Use AI as a default tool — you regularly use Claude Code or similar agentic coding tools to automate your own workflows, analyze data, and move at a pace that would be impossible without AI fluency. - Navigate ambiguity with confidence — you won't get detailed briefs or clear swim lanes. You'll get context, constraints, and trust. WHO YOU ARE - 0–8 years of experience — you might be coming from a top consulting firm (MBB), a high-growth startup, an early-stage CoS role, or a rotational program. What matters more than pedigree is evidence of exceptional output and high agency. - Generalist by nature — you're the person who picks up new domains fast, whether it's mortgage servicing economics, AI deployment strategy, or org design. - High agency and low ego — you volunteer for the unglamorous work, you don't wait for permission, and you'd rather ship something imperfect today than perfect it next month. - Strong written communicator — you can write a crisp one-pager, a persuasive Slack message, or a detailed process doc with equal fluency. - AI-native — you already use AI tools daily to amplify your work. You think in terms of "how do I automate this" before "how do I do this manually." - Based in New York — this role is hybrid and requires in-person presence. WHAT WON'T WORK - People who need clearly