Nustom
I was the first non-engineer to join Nustom. I joined to take all the non-technical weight off the cofounders: starting with the initial company infrastructure setup, and with a view to running supplemented app development, go-to-market, and operations as we launched and scaled. This role gave me a great opportunity to start at day one, genuinely going from almost-nothing on the company infrastructure right through to having slick, repeatable, relatively automated processes around all fundamental corporate functions and business operations.
I stepped into a new industry, a new company stage, and a new set of responsibilities. I immersed myself in the AI scene, learning the fundamental principles and technologies underpinning LLMs, prompt engineering best practices, experimenting with and evaluating new AI tools, evaluating our competitive landscape, and keeping abreast with research and governance developments in this fast-moving space.
We ultimately decided to take a different strategy to solving the difficult technical problems at the core of the company. As we pivoted from engineering products to deeply technical research, we (very amicably!) parted ways as it became clear that a full-time experienced COO wasn’t the right investment at this stage.
Core responsibilities:
Setting up good financial practices:
working with bookkeepers to consistently close month end for both US TopCo and UK OpCo within one working day
establishing 18-month financial projections, and tracking and reporting progress against these
setting up treasury to balance maximum yield with necessary liquidity
establishing expense cards and accounts payable processes to minimise FX loss across an international team
Managing legal relationships: handling all company admin in relation to incorporation in both Delaware and the UK, tailoring employment and consulting contracts and NDAs, outlining commercial terms of service and approach to intellectual property, setting international trademark strategy.
Working closely with founders to develop culture, values & behaviours.
Establishing an efficient, adaptable hiring process and supporting infrastructure
Led organisation-wide planning, standup, retrospectives, offsites and leadership team meetings.