Founder-adjacent roles at companies between Series A and pre-IPO — hand-placed across four capitals. We match students with the founders, chiefs of staff and early operators building Asia's next generation of companies in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Bangkok, then handle the visa, the housing and the introductions.
Asia is where the most consequential consumer and B2B companies of the next decade are being built — most of them outside the cities that hire from American campuses. A placement here puts a fellow inside one of those companies while the team is still small enough that a single hire shifts the trajectory.
We place fellows across the working span of the field: chief-of-staff and founder's-office work, growth and go-to-market, product and engineering at early teams, and operations inside the first business systems. Every seat is sourced privately, after a conversation about what a fellow can already carry and what they want to learn next.
The companies we work with sit between Series A and pre-IPO — past survival, before bureaucracy. Fellows write the first version of a process, ship the feature that closes a deal, sit in on a board call — and leave with a reference from a founder and the muscle memory of how a company actually scales.
What a fellow does not do is sit through a graduate scheme dressed up in startup vocabulary. The placement is built around real ownership — a launch, a system, a hire — scoped to be finished, measured and handed off inside a single summer.
No particular degree is expected. We have placed engineers, business students, designers, anthropology majors and one composer — anyone whose temperament fits the room.
What the office looks for is initiative and durability. The fifteen-minute call is where we find that — not a transcript.
Five archetypes we source against. Every actual seat is hand-matched to a fellow after the introductory call — these describe the shape of the work, not a fixed opening.
Closest to the principal — board prep, hiring, the unsexy operational fires nobody else has time for. Fellows leave with a working map of how a company actually runs.
The team that finds and keeps customers — paid channels, partnerships, the launch plan, the first hundred enterprise calls. Outcomes are measurable inside the summer.
A small product team where a fellow's commit reaches users this week — feature work, design partner calls, the loop between what was built and what was learned.
The plumbing of a young company — finance, hiring, supplier work, the first version of an internal tool. Quiet work that compounds.
A seat inside an early-stage fund — sourcing, founder calls, market memos. For fellows who want to see what the room looks like from the other side of the table.
Something else in mind?
Tell the office on the call. Startup placements are scoped to the fellow, not the other way round.
The same field reads differently in each city. Where a fellow is placed depends on the work they want and the team that fits them.
A smaller but sharpening startup scene — fintech, climate, B2B SaaS — run by founders who often raised in Singapore and build between cities. Strong for a fellow drawn to companies selling into both China and the West.
Mainland China's startup density is the highest in the world, and the operating tempo is famous for a reason. Best for a fellow who wants to see what a company looks like at full pace, and is willing to keep up.
Southeast Asia's startup capital — headquarters for most regional unicorns and the funds that backed them. The most fluent landing for a fellow new to the region.
A younger ecosystem where founders carry more of the load themselves and a fellow's surface area is wide. Best for someone who wants to touch a company end-to-end rather than one slice of it.
I came in expecting to take notes in standups. By week three the founder had handed me the launch — and the plan I wrote became how the company onboards every new market. No classroom does that.