Founding Operator

About us

Motives is an AI market researcher. Our AI runs in-depth interviews with real people and then writes up all the results to help companies understand their customers better. Consumer brands spend $100 billion on market research every year and we're building an AI to take over this industry. 

Our AI is 10x faster and 10x cheaper than traditional focus groups, without sacrificing quality. We're growing fast and already having a significant impact on this market, with household-name clients including Uber, Diageo, and Anthropic. 

We're based in London and have a highly experienced team: our founders come from Google and Palantir and our team includes expert market researchers and top engineers. 

We did Y Combinator in 2025, raised a $3 million seed round, and are set for substantial further growth in the rest of 2026. We see this as a uniquely good vertical AI opportunity: a slow-moving, fragmented traditional industry with huge enterprise spending.

The role

We’re looking for someone to come in and own operational work across the business. You’ll be the first hire in this function, so will have full ownership of a number of different functions. We’re hoping you’ll get your hands dirty and do them at first, then build processes for them to help us scale, including defining tasks then handing them off to a contractor, a future hire, or AI. 

This is a very high leverage role, where you’ll work across teams and projects to identify and execute on the highest priorities for the business. You’ll work closely day-to-day with our founders, in particular the CEO.

Your job will be a mix of getting things done yourself, enabling/unblocking other teams to get things done, and improving company processes and approaches to make everyone more productive.

The responsibilities

On any given week you may rotate between a variety of different tasks, based on which are the most pressing at the time. We’re looking for someone who’s excited for the idea of diving into whatever is the most important problem at the time. 

That said, we have a good idea of what the first 6-12 months will look like, which will include:

Events & Marketing

• Events - In-person events are proving to be a core growth strategy for us. You have the opportunity to both plan and execute our strategy for conferences and events:
  • Market Research conferences - 2026 has been the first year we’ve attended conferences, and we have about 5 on the schedule for the year as a whole. You might organize our attendance at conferences for the future end-to-end, and can also own setting the strategy for which conferences we should go to.
  • Client events - we’re finding that regular in-person events with our clients and prospects is a great way to grow the relationship. We’re looking for someone who can create and execute a plan for keeping our clients and prospects engaged with in-person events, maybe 3-4 times per year. Some of our current ideas:
    • Intimate dinners with 5-8 clients
    • A Motives-hosted mini-conference with ~30 attendees
    • Try something new: breakfasts? Drinks events? Lunches?
• Take ownership of other marketing opportunities:
  • Creating blog & LinkedIn content, or project managing the client-facing team to write the content and making sure it gets shipped
  • Launching a Motives podcast, where someone from Motives interviews our clients and prospects
  • Any other ideas you have!

Sales enablement

• Create content: case studies, best practices, usage guides, etc.
  • You might create these yourself, or you might project manage client-facing teams to create these
• Sales operations:
  • Build/extend our systems for revenue tracking, credit tracking
• Support on / own RFP and enterprise procurement submissions

Operations 

• Improve our process for invoicing (and hand off to/manage our accountants)
• Identify and vet research panels
• Potentially find a new office, and sort out office management
• Team social/event planning 
• Fill in other gaps where necessary - maybe you'll help do some of the operational work to deliver a research project to a client, maybe you’ll step in to run a client meeting, or maybe you’ll take on some HR responsibilities

AI Automation

There are a number of places where our team could benefit from a centralized approach to AI tools, so you could own building and improving these tools.

One example of AI automation would be that you could set up AI tools to do any of the above responsibilities more effectively. 

Other opportunities include building AI automations for the Sales/Client Management teams, including such features as:

• Write follow-up emails after client calls
• More automated CRM with all contacts with a client getting pulled in and summarized
• Prep notes ahead of every client call
• An AI “pipeline assistant” that suggests next steps for all clients in the pipeline every week, with proposed drafts

What we’re looking for

We’re flexible on years of experience: we’re open to someone early in their career (in what might be more of a Founder’s Associate role) or someone who has done this before and has more extensive startup or other experience (which might be more of a Head of Operations / Chief of Staff role).

Either way, you should be excited about getting your hands dirty and getting things done - you should be happiest when you’re getting stuck in. But that should be balanced with a desire to improve processes that you’re in charge of, whether that’s by automating them with AI, hiring a contractor, or building a better system to make yourself more efficient.

Other important attributes include:

• A blend of detail-oriented and big-picture: you’re comfortable both doing some things to very good quality, and leaving other things only at 80% - and have an instinct for which is which
• Excellent problem solving
• Strong written and verbal communication
• High EQ
• Excitement about working in ambiguity (and being comfortable with the tasks you’re working on changing quickly, sometimes in the middle of doing them).

What we’re offering you

• Salary negotiable depending on experience, with the opportunity for significant advancement as you and the company grow
• Significant equity - UK startups tend not to give enough equity, but we believe being generous with equity is better for everyone.
• Unlimited holiday - take the time you need and don’t worry about counting the days
• For this role we’re hoping you’ll be in our office in London (near the Barbican) ~4 days per week, but we’re flexible day-to-day: we all spend some days working from home, work remotely for longer periods occasionally, and don’t really care which particular hours of the day you work.

You’ll also get the chance to work directly with the founders of a startup building a truly AI-centric product, being applied to an enormous market. You’ll be working with and reporting to the CEO directly and you’ll collaborate closely to get things done. 

We have an experienced team and have learned a lot of lessons through a number of pivots before landing on Motives, so while we’re a fast-paced startup we also aim to have a level-headed and thoughtful approach to our work.

This role also has enormous growth potential. We’re hoping to find someone who will take care of the many operational needs we have today and quickly grow into owning an entire function or functions for the business.