People & Business Operations Lead

tl;dr we’re hiring a part recruiter / BizOps / brand strategist to own critical company-wide goals related to hiring and business operations. You will report directly to our co-founder/CEO, and have the opportunity to grow into senior people/business operations role over time. Estimate breakdown to start is 70% people ops and 30% business ops (will change over time).

Why are we hiring this role?

• We’re growing like crazy and need to release key bottlenecks to hit our aggressive growth targets over the next year+. Two key growth constraints are our ability to: (1) recruit excellent candidates to fill our open roles, and (2) handle our customer/revenue operations processes as we scale.
• Today, this role is performed “part-time” by several of our co-founders and TPMs. By consolidating this work under a dedicated role, we will expand our capacity to grow even more aggressively than we are today.

Why join us?

• Early-stage, yet de-risked: we are a rare combo of being early stage (high upside) but lower risk (2XX+ paying customers, $Xm+ recurring revenue, cash-flow positive for over a year, hockey-stick growth). You get the benefits of an early stage startup without the risk you’ll have at almost any other startup. You’ll have a ton of impact, work directly with our customers, and get to work on interesting technical challenges you won’t see at bigger companies. Although we’re early stage, we’ve eliminated key strategic risks you’ll face at other startups. Like an unproven product, lack of market validation, lack of revenue, over-reliance on VC funding, co-founder disputes. We’re all young and hungry. Our team is fully in-person, tenacious, and committed - most of us moved to SF from far away (Canada, SoCal, Texas, Virginia) specifically to build Agave from the ground up.
• Team is technical, diverse, young: you'll work with a formidable founding team that's experienced, intense, and ambitious. We've worked together for 10 years, first at a startup that Amazon acquired, then at Amazon, and now at Agave. You'll learn a ton while having outsized ownership. You’ll have a front-row seat to the good and bad of building a company from the ground up. We’re also technical - all but 1 of our team (our AE!) have either majored in CS, worked as full-time devs, and/or worked in technical roles at startups and larger tech companies for 5+ years before moving into business roles at Agave.
• Huge opportunity without direct competition: startups are incredibly hard, so you want to join one that has a unique advantage. You don’t want to spend years of your life on a company in a saturated market with tons of competition. We’re seizing an opportunity that’s massive (Construction is the world’s third-largest industry) but also overlooked by most people in startup land. Most who can solve this problem aren’t aware it exists or are too distracted by tech trends (blockchain, metaverse, LLMs, etc.) to notice. These talented folks get coaxed into building products that seem cool early on, but don’t solve durable problems or aren’t differentiated enough against their many competitors to be sustainable (e.g. lots of AI products), so they end-up not going anywhere or stagnating without a clear plan to grow profitably. As a result, we have a multi-year head start against potential competitors, increasing our odds of success significantly. We’re also backed by world-class investors (Accel, YC) and Construction insiders (Procore and Autodesk executives, founders of the largest construction tech companies like PlanGrid).

Responsibilities

• Hiring (end to end): build an efficient, selective, and personable hiring funnel that converts talented candidates
  • contribute to company-wide hiring goals for technical and non-technical roles
  • assist in planning, creating, and releasing job descriptions and announcements
  • source candidates from schools, industries, and networks where skilled, ambitious people cluster
  • develop creative hacks that short-circuit traditional methods and give us an edge over other companies
  • partner with external recruiters to extend our network and add leverge to our hiring process
  • screen candidates to determine their motivation, preferences, and fit for our open roles
  • convert candidates efficiently, ensuring a thoughtful, personal touch at each step along the way
  • close candidates we want to join us, working alongside the co-founders and hiring managers
  • coordianate recruiting logistics, including on-site interviews
  • optimize our hiring processes, tools, and systems to ensure efficiency
• Business operations: own core business operations outside of recruiting
  • Customers: send invoices and swag to new customers after they onboard, track and chase overdue payments, highlight upcoming contract renewals to our team, poll and analyze customer satisfaction over time
  • Marketing: help manage conference logistics, draft customer newsletters, own social media posts, update product assets (e.g. marketplace app listings)
  • team: help coordinate team events, and manage office upkeep (e.g. snacks, furniture)
• Brand strategy: craft a company brand and message that attracts the world’s best talent; own its rollout + refinement
  • build a deep understanding of our customers, product, and industry
  • define what’s unique about agave for candidates + why we’re a top choice for high performers
  • improve and develop new recruiting assets (e.g. website, career page, candidate slides) to highlight our mission, values, and unique challenges
  • craft compelling content that highlights our achievements, innovative projects, and employee stories; own sharing this with our target audience (e.g. on LinkedIn)
• Project management (ad hoc): spearhead projects, whether related to people or our business
  • ex: coordinate team swag order, ensuring a stellar deliverable, on time, and within budget
  • ex: understand and file time-sensitive immigration paperwork for international employees
  • ex: debug and improve the internet in our office when service is interrupted
  • ex: plan a quarterly team off-site in Big Sur, managing lodging, food, and team activities

Requirements

• Must have:
  • we’re targeting 2-5 YoE overall
  • 1+ years of experience at a software company
    • Ideally this is a fast-growing startup (earlier stage the better), or another strong signal for rigor & hard work (e.g. big 3 consulting, banking)
  • 1+ years of experience in a similar operations role, ideally with focus on people operations
• Nice to have:
  • experience in full-cycle recruiting, including sourcing and closing candidates
  • familiarity with job boards and HR software (we use Ashby as our ATS)
  • familiarity with construction
• Key traits:
  • extremely organized and detail oriented
  • excellent communication skills - responsive, clear, succinct
  • ability to tell compelling stories, especially about a company and brand to candidates
  • comfortable operating independently and efficiently, with little upfront guidance
  • thrive in ambiguous situations and create order out of uncertainty
  • desire to learn, experiment, and use data to iterate to better decisions

Benefits

• Healthcare: we cover 90% of your healthcare costs with several plan options.
• 401k: we match 100% of your contributions, up to 4% of annual salary.
• Relocation: sizable relocation bonus for folks currently located outside of the Bay Area.
• Gym: on-site gym with Peloton, squat rack, Tempo, Yoga setup, and more.
• Visa: we sponsor Visas (H1B, TN, etc.) for candidates who are a good fit!

In-Person

• We've built Agave in-person since day 1, and will maintain an in-person culture in San Francisco going forward. We form tighter bonds, build a stronger culture, and move faster since we're all working from one location.
• Our office is just west of Twin Peaks, 1 block from a bus stop, 10min walk from a BART station, and a 5min drive off the 101 and 280. Our entire team commutes here every day. We believe building in-person is a huge strategic advantage, and we hope you’ll join us.