Founder's Associate - Business Operations & Strategy

Papcup is building next-generation at-home diagnostics.

We're an early-stage team and this role is a broad, founder-facing generalist position that combines commercial/strategic work with running the operational backbone of the company.

The Role

We’re looking for a generalist operator who can take ambiguous, high-stakes questions and independently do the work to answer them — whether that’s a commercial opportunity, a financial question, or an operational problem.

You’ll move between analysis, execution, company operations and external relationship-building depending on what the week needs.

This is a hands-on role: you’ll build the model, set up the system, run the process and follow through.

You’ll work directly with the founder, with significant autonomy and exposure to decisions across the company.

• What You’ll Do
• Own commercial and strategic analysis — market research, competitor analysis, pricing, business cases and financial models — and turn it into clear recommendations
• Develop and launch new commercial offers, pricing and positioning based on research and analysis
• Build and manage our e-commerce and commercial infrastructure, including our online store, payment flows and CRM (e. g. Shopify, Stripe, or equivalent)
• Plan and manage paid and organic acquisition channels, including campaign setup and performance tracking
• Develop and manage relationships with external commercial and institutional partners
• Prepare materials and analysis for partner meetings, investor conversations and internal strategic decisions
• Manage commercial opportunities end-to-end — from research and qualification through follow-up and coordination — escalating strategic calls to the founder
• Finance & Operations
• Own day-to-day company operations and build systems that keep a growing team organised and accountable
• Maintain budgets, financial forecasts and cash-flow visibility, and track actual spend against plan
• Manage day-to-day financial administration, including payments, invoices, purchase orders and expenses
• Coordinate grant administration, reporting and claims
• Build and maintain company processes, documentation standards and internal systems
• Own company-wide project tracking, including milestones, OKRs and KPIs
• Coordinate with accountants, suppliers, advisers and other external parties
• Spot operational gaps, propose solutions and implement them with minimal oversight
• What You’ll Bring
• Strong analytical and financial modelling skills; comfort building a business case from a blank page
• Experience building or running e-commerce or direct-to-consumer commercial operations
• Strong operational judgement and the ability to build and maintain processes, not just propose them
• Working knowledge of tools such as Shopify, Stripe, CRM platforms and Mailchimp
• Experience with paid acquisition platforms and funnel/conversion analysis
• Comfort owning external relationships independently — research, outreach, meeting preparation and follow-through
• High autonomy: you can take a broad, ambiguous question and structure your own path to an answer
• Excellent written and verbal communication — you can produce something a founder, investor or partner can act on without a follow-up conversation
• Willingness to move between high-level analytical work and the unglamorous operational details required to make things happen
• Nice to Have
• Prior experience in an early-stage startup, consulting or founder-facing operating role
• Experience in healthcare, diagnostics or another regulated commercial environment
• Experience managing a partner or customer pipeline from initial research through to execution
• Experience with startup financial planning, grant administration or management reporting
• Experience implementing project management, KPI or OKR systems in a small team

What We Offer

• Competitive salary plus meaningful equity
• Direct, high-exposure work with the founder across every part of the business
• Significant autonomy and scope to shape how this role and the company's operations develop
• A small, fast-moving team where your work has visible, immediate impact
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