One Month of Podcasts Plus Open Roles at Fast Growing Startups

Why First Builders are poised to create the next generation of sustaining unicorns

We’re talking about First Builders morning, noon, and night over here at The Council. What is a First Builder? They are the “the early operators who join before success is obvious and help create it.” They’re the types of founders we back through The Council Fund.

We’re sharing the behind the scenes of how we’re finding First Builders and why they are the New Tech Mafia in town. Check out our framework to learn why early team members at successful companies are akin to second-time founders to us when evaluating their leadership potential. Highlights include:

1. First Builders are created during “high slope” periods in company growth, meaning “companies are growing so fast they're constantly breaking and rebuilding their systems, processes, and sometimes their entire identity.”

2. Key traits of First Builders: extreme adaptability, comfort with ambiguity, rapid ascent and impact, elite talent networks, and extreme versatility.

3. High slope environments churn out unicorn founders (source: Endeavor)

If you are a First Builder building vertical AI for an essential (think: complex, foundational) industry like healthcare, law, or manufacturing, we’d love to hear from you.

Dive deeper via the First Builders podcast, where we interview founders and early employees at successful companies like Hinge Health, Substack, Square, and Chime  

We launched a podcast! If you missed the debut, now’s a perfect time to tune in. We’re already six episodes in and releasing them weekly. Give us a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Our podcast featuring the stories of those who go first is getting rave reviews! “We’re loving this new podcast from Amber Illig and Rachel Tsui...each episode brings a candid practical conversation with someone who has helped shape companies before there was a playbook.”

Check out our team’s favorite episodes so far

Discover open roles at our top performing portfolio companies!

Let us know why you might be the perfect fit and we may be able to get your resume to the top of the pile.

• GC AI is the AI tool for in-house legal counsel.

  • Recently raised their $10M Series A led by Sound Ventures and are already serving 450+ customers within 12 months of being founded.

  • Open roles include Head of Sales, Chief of Staff, and Engineers.

• Dirac is supercharging the modern manufacturing engineer with BuildOS.

  • Raised a hearty Seed round last year led by Founders Fund. 

  • Recently announced a new module for their product Build OS called Operator Plus. Operator Plus provides further real time connection between the shop floor and engineering. 

  • Open roles include Customer Success and a Full Stack Engineer.  

• Siena creates empathetic AI customer experience (CX) agents designed for commerce. 

  • Recently introduced Siena Memory to deepen a company’s knowledge of each customer profile and provide the highest quality of CX.

  • Open roles include VP of Sales.

• Joyful Health automates financial operations for healthcare providers - starting with handling your denials and unpaid claims.

  • Recently raised a Seed round from Designer Fund, Inflect Health, and XYZ Ventures.

  • Open roles include Founding Data Engineer, Founding Ops Lead, and Founding Designer.

Our exclusive operator network continues to deepen

Webinar Alert: Why GTM Leaders Make Great Angel Investors

Go-to-market leaders (think: marketers, product marketers, growth leaders) are uniquely positioned to succeed as angel investors. Your deep understanding of customer needs, market dynamics, and scaling strategies gives you an edge in identifying promising startups—and supporting them as they grow. But how do you actually break into angel investing?

Join us for a dynamic conversation with Carrie Cowan and Vivian Luu, two powerhouse GTM operators and active investors with The Council Angels. Carrie and Vivian have led growth and marketing at top-tier companies like Microsoft, NVIDIA, Uber, and Adobe—and now bring that same strategic expertise to the startup ecosystem as investors and advisors.

📅 Thursday, July 24 at 10 am PT | 👉 Register for the webinar! 

Accepting Applications for our Fall Cohort

Interested in joining an angel investing community for top operators?

We’re focused on finding exceptional First Builders (operators or founders) to join The Council’s angel community for our fall cohort. Apply before August 8th so we can fast track your interview. You can apply using this link!

Membership at The Council Angels includes:

Thank you from The Council Team!