Chief of Staff

WHO WE ARE Lantern is building the AI-native operating system for the $9T wholesale distribution industry. Billions of dollars sit tied up in stock, yet most distributors still buy on gut feel and spreadsheets. We partner with leading distributors to deliver precise, AI-powered purchasing recommendations that drive 30% leaner inventory, 10% higher sales, and 20+ hours saved per week per user. We've gone from $0 to $5M ARR in 8 months, raised $7M from top VCs, and are hitting hypergrowth. THE ROLE We're hiring a Chief of Staff to work directly alongside our CEO across every part of the business: product, deployments, sales, recruiting, and fundraising. The central challenge is taking the company's most important open problems, the ones nobody owns yet, and driving them to a result. You'll own priorities end to end, from the first customer call through the analysis, the decision, and the number it moves. It's a high-ownership role on a small team, with a direct line to every decision that shapes the company.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Own Lantern's highest-leverage strategic priorities end to end, with real accountability for the outcome.

• Stand up new functions from nothing and run them: build the first version, own the numbers, scale what works, and help hire the right functional leader at the right time.

• Work across product and deployments, turning what distributors actually need into product decisions and unblocking live implementations.

• Run recruiting for critical hires, from sourcing through close, and help set the bar for who joins this team.

• Support fundraising by building the models, the narrative, and the diligence materials.

• Own the operating cadence: metrics, meeting rhythm, board prep, and investor updates.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 3–6 years in consulting, banking, venture capital, product, or an operating role at a high-growth startup.

• Energized by time with customers. You'll spend real time with distributors, and you're at your best in those conversations.

• A track record of taking on ambiguous, cross-functional work and driving it all the way to a result.

• Strong analytical horsepower: you build the model, pressure-test the assumptions, and can defend the answer.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, from a customer email to a board slide.

• Exceptional with people. You earn trust fast with engineers, customers, candidates, and investors alike.

• An extreme user of AI. Like the rest of our team, you sit on the frontier of AI-enabled work, and you help push that frontier further.

• Bias toward action, high standards, and real ambition about what you want to build.

NICE TO HAVE

• Prior Chief of Staff, BizOps, strategy, or early GTM experience at a seed to Series B company.

• Exposure to supply chain, distribution, industrials, or B2B software sold to non-technical buyers.

WHAT YOU'LL GET

• A founding-era, high-impact role in a massive, under-served market.

• Unfiltered exposure to how a company gets built: customers, board, hiring, pricing.

• The clearest path we have to an executive seat, or to founding your own company.

• Competitive compensation: ~$200K base + equity.

• An office in San Francisco with a tight-knit founding team.

WHAT WE VALUE We hire operators who own outcomes, combining sharp judgment with pragmatic execution and a willingness to do the unglamorous work. Hard work, humility, customer obsession, and pride in a job well done: the values our customers live by, and the values we hire for.