Executive Assistant to the CEO

People catch mistakes by checking what they hear against what they know. AI doesn't check against what your company knows. Verity does. The check runs in under half a second against 200 sources, 5 to 9 times faster than a purpose-built checker and about 1,000 times cheaper per claim than a GPT-4 judge. Based in NYC. Small senior team. Live product. Design partners in motion.

https://veritylabs.io

The role

You are the operating partner to the CEO. You sit inside every meeting that matters: investor pitches, customer calls, product decisions, hires. You leave each one with the work already in motion. The sell here is proximity. You see what the CEO sees in the same minute, and the company runs faster because you were in the room.

The calendar is the floor. The ceiling is Chief of Staff in 18 months.

What you'll own

• The CEO's time, end to end. Calendar, inbox, travel, follow-through. Treated as decisions that compound.
• Ambiguous asks, compressed. A 10-word Slack from me comes back as three facts, a recommendation, and the risk. Short. If I ask for X, you deliver X plus the next question I was about to ask.
• Same-day executive requests. Investor intros, deck pulls, reference calls, due-diligence packages. Closed out quickly, to a bar high enough that nothing comes back.
• Orphaned workstreams. Step in where something important has no clear owner, run it until it has a permanent home, hand it over cleanly. New-hire onboarding, event logistics, vendor contracts, board prep. Whoever shows up first owns it, and that's often you.
• Investor and customer ops. CRM clean. Every meeting logged. Follow-ups on the D+2/D+5 cadence without being asked. Exec summaries and references packaged before the request lands.
• Meeting prep. 24 hours before every call: who, what they've said, what we want, three asks. In my inbox the night before.
• Draft in the CEO's voice. Emails, LinkedIn replies, intros, follow-ups. Accurate enough after five examples that most go out unedited. You catch typos, enforce the house style (no em dashes, no "we kill X" openers), and kill the slop before it leaves the building.
• The operating rhythm. Weekly reviews, offsites, board prep, investor cadence. On rails without being asked.
• Confidential by default. Cap table, candidate feedback, legal filings, personnel moves. Baseline posture.

Who you are

• You structure ambiguous problems and get to a clear recommendation, fast, under incomplete information.
• You build trust in one meeting with people who are short on time: investors, senior operators, customer execs.
• You are allergic to things falling through cracks. If a thread goes 48 hours without a reply, you notice before I do.
• Your writing is sharp. You can tell copy that works from copy that doesn't, and you can draft in someone else's voice after a few reps.
• You run tight loops. "Done" means shipped.
• You are early-career hungry or mid-career intentional. Pure-corporate EAs rarely thrive at founder-stage velocity. The step from scheduler to operating partner is the whole job.
• You are comfortable in Google Workspace, Notion, Slack, Linear, and the current wave of AI tools. You don't need to code. You do need to be fast.
• NYC-based or willing to work NYC hours, with occasional travel (SF, DC, investor days).

Compensation

This role is equity-only today. Meaningful equity (target range 0.25 to 0.75 percent, negotiated by stage of hire and prior experience) with conversion to a cash base plus equity once the company is in a position to pay salaries. Target post-close base: approximately $130K. Early seat, early stage, with the upside sized accordingly.

What that buys you: the first hire in the Office of the CEO at a company that has a shot at mattering. If the company works, the person in this seat becomes Chief of Staff, then VP Operations, then anywhere. If it doesn't, you leave with the fastest 18 months of pattern-matching available in New York.

If equity-only doesn't fit your situation, that's fair. Don't apply. If it does, this is the best seat on the field.

How to apply

Short note. No templated cover letter. Three questions:

1. The founder or operator you most recently worked with. What specifically did you take off their plate that no one asked you to?
2. One thing you shipped in the last 30 days that didn't exist as a task, and that saved somebody time.
3. Why this, now, at Verity. Two sentences.

Attach resume or LinkedIn. I read every submission personally for the first two weeks. Expect a 15-minute call within 72 hours if it's a fit.

James Knurbein
CEO & Co-founder, Verity Labs
j@veritylabs.io