Founder and CEO Industrial Shield
Founders Factory is a venture studio, accelerator, and investment platform that builds and funds early-stage startups. It supports founders with capital, operational expertise, corporate partnerships, and access to a global network.
Maintainer signals as of 9/2/2026
About Founders Factory
Founders Factory partners with entrepreneurs and leading companies to co-found new ventures, accelerate startups, and invest in early-stage businesses. Its activities include venture building, cohort-based accelerator programs, sector-focused investment funds, operational support, and corporate innovation partnerships across fintech, health, industrials, deep tech, and climate. It serves ambitious founders, corporate partners, and early-stage technology startups.
Skills
About the Role
Turn an industrial-safety thesis into a scalable business by defining the mining market and buyer strategy, developing a wearable device and dashboard, securing an initial paid pilot, establishing the subscription model, hiring a team, raising capital, and positioning the venture as a category leader.
Requirements
- Experience as a founder or senior operator building a hardware and software or IoT product from zero to one.
- Familiarity with mining or heavy-industry health and safety, or enterprise construction.
- Ability to sell preventative products to CFOs or health and safety directors and convert pilots into multi-year per-head contracts.
- Ability to reason about sensors, edge computing, and device economics.
- Ability to operate amid ambiguity and make decisions with incomplete data.
- Credibility with industrial buyers and venture investors.
- Willingness to be based in the United Kingdom or Australia.
Responsibilities
- Define the initial mining geography, buyer, and procurement channel.
- Develop the three-in-one wearable clip and dashboard into a pilot-ready product.
- Convert introductions into a paid pilot with a mining or industrial operator.
- Establish and test the per-worker subscription model, insurer co-funding, and partner-led distribution.
- Use dust and heat regulation to create procurement urgency.
- Hire the initial team, raise capital, and establish the venture as a category leader.
Benefits
- €275k of spin-out capital
- Founder stipend and studio budget
- Hands-on support across product, growth, fundraising, AI and machine learning, design, legal, and hiring
- Full-time venture builder support for the MVP
- Six months of operational support post-launch
- Introductions to investors and corporate partners
- A vetted concept and domain insight