Founder's Associate

About Comena
Comena builds AI agents for industrial distributors and manufacturers to automate their order processing from e-mail inbox to ERP. At distributors across the US and Germany alone, there are 4 million sales and procurement people stuck in manual workflows between inbox and ERP. We want to automate this work and liberate these people to work on more meaningful things.

We’re part of the YC S25 batch - the most selective batch in YC history. We recently raised a seed round from top Silicon Valley investors and are serving customers across US and Germany.

About the role
We’re looking for a Founder's Associate to work directly with the founders on the highest-priority projects in the company. This is an early-career, high-ownership role for someone who wants to start their own company one day and wants a front-row seat to building an AI startup from the inside first.

This role is for generalists who want to learn how a startup actually gets built. Your initial focus will be split roughly equally across three areas: marketing, hiring, and founder projects. This means helping get Comena in front of the right industrial companies, finding and closing great people to join the team, and supporting the founders with sales and other high-priority projects. Over time, you'll take ownership of whatever the company needs most, from special projects to building out entire functions.

What you’ll do

• Plan and run marketing campaigns across LinkedIn, email, website, trade shows, and events

• Create content: founder posts, customer stories, case studies, newsletters, and landing pages

• Turn customer conversations and product launches into stories that generate pipeline

• Build sales assets: decks, one-pagers, ROI materials, and support live deals

• Own our hiring funnel: source candidates, run outreach, screen, and coordinate interviews

• Build and use AI systems across marketing, sales, recruiting, and internal operations

• Collaborate with designers to create compelling marketing materials

• Test new channels, formats, and messaging - and measure what actually moves pipeline and hires

• Work directly with the founders on whatever matters most that week

What we’re looking for

• Excellent writing and communication skills in English and German

• High ownership and low ego

• Good judgment, taste, attention to detail, and follow-through

• Comfort operating in ambiguity and moving quickly

• Wanting to work very hard beyond traditional 9-5 hours

• Fluency with AI tools for research, writing, design, and analysis

• Excitement about startups, AI, and industrial businesses

You might be a fit if

• You want to found your own company one day and want to learn how it's done first

• You want to work directly with founders and learn fast

• You like being trusted with real responsibility early

• You are excited by execution, not just strategy

• You want a role that can grow quickly with your performance

You're probably not a fit if

• You want to own one narrow channel or function

• You need a detailed brief before you start

• You prefer coming up with ideas over shipping them

• You don't enjoy writing or talking to people

Why join

• Work directly with the founders every day

• Learn how an AI startup builds its brand, hires its team, and scales

• Get broad exposure, rapid feedback, and increasing responsibility

• Help modernize how industrial companies operate

About the interview

1. 15 min intro call with Youssef

2. Take-home challenge

3. 60 min coworking call with Jiehua

4. In-person meeting

5. Offer