Founding CEO / Interim CEO

You can put a product in front of 200 buyers on day one. That's the hardest thing to build in a startup — and you already own it.You're not the engineer. You're the reason a product would have customers on launch day instead of a cold-start problem. A newsletter a niche actually reads. A community that trusts you. A channel, a book of business, a distribution relationship, a following. You know a market cold — you just don't have the team to build the thing it's waiting for.That's the gap we close.What Badge Labs IsBadge Labs is a venture studio — the technical co-founding team that builds software companies with commercial operators. You bring the market and the commercial engine. We bring the engineering, the product, the brand, the go-to-market, the investor materials, and the financial model. A co-founding partnership with skin in the game on both sides — not a vendor you manage.First time hearing "venture studio"? The landing page lays out exactly how the seat works, in plain English: justbadge.com/founding-ceoThe ProofThe build was never the bottleneck — reach is. We've shipped 30+ products, put 15+ AI agents into production, and taken one company from $0 to $6M ARR; getting in front of the right buyers was the ceiling on every one of them. And we move fast: a Georgia trial attorney came to us with a methodology in his head and no code, and six weeks later he had a live SaaS company — product, brand, marketing site, six languages, investor deck, 36-month financial model, real users, real payments. He made us co-founder. Bring a market that's already yours and you start where most companies spend their first year trying to get.Who We're Looking ForSomeone who can honestly say "I can bring the first hundred customers."A community or association operator — you run a Slack, a forum, an association, a membership. Your members are the beachhead. An audience-holder — newsletter, podcast, channel, following. A niche listens to you. A channel or distribution owner — you sit on a partner network, a reseller base, or a relationship that moves product. A head of growth / sales / GTM — you've owned a number and a pipeline, and you know a market that's underserved. A book-of-business holder — you are the buyer's trusted contact, and your peers would follow you to something new. What We BringA senior engineering team that turns your market into a shipped product in weeks The whole company around it — product, brand, go-to-market, investor materials, financial model Competitive teardowns that find the open gap and the wedge that takes it A co-founding team on the hook with you — not a vendor you manage We take it from idea to live users while you open the market What You BringA distribution asset that is the launch market — list, channel, audience, community, or book of business The credibility to activate it — people move because you asked Commercial judgment and the drive to co-own a company, not advise one Conviction to commit to a co-founding partnership (full terms on the landing page) How It WorksApply — Tell us the market you can open and how you reach it. 20-minute call — A working conversation, not a screening. We pressure-test the size and warmth of your distribution together. Scope — We map the company: product, launch plan, and an equity split weighted to the market you bring. Build — We ship it. You open the channel. Co-founders from day one. What if it doesn't work?If the market doesn't convert the way we both bet it would, the split unwinds cleanly: you keep the IP and everything we built, our equity reverts, and nobody's locked into anything. We structure for the upside and de-risk the downside — that's the whole point of doing it as co-founders.Not the one to co-found it?If you know a commercial operator who fits this better than you do, refer them — we pay 15% for life on anything that closes, no equity, no obligation: justbadge.com/partnersSkills: operations,advisor,consultant,ceo,entrepreneur,investor,corporate advisory,executive