📍 San Francisco, CA - Full Time - In Person

<aside>

The opportunity

We're hiring a Chief of Staff to help run two connected businesses at the center of the AI ecosystem: AI Council, our community and conference for the people shipping AI, and Zero Prime Ventures, our day-zero fund backing deeply technical founders.

This is a mini-COO role for an unusually capable generalist. Most of your time will go toward operating and growing AI Council across sales, marketing, event production, and finance — with ownership of plans, metrics, budgets, and P&L. You'll work alongside, and help direct, the people and partners who already run each of these functions day to day, owning the overall plan and the numbers. You'll also help increase the Founder's leverage across both organizations: turning priorities into action, preparing decisions, protecting focus, and making sure important threads don't drop.

The scope is intentionally broad and expected to grow. The right person will earn ownership quickly and can develop toward broader operating leadership over time.

</aside>

About Zero Prime & AI Council

Zero Prime is an early-stage venture firm backing engineer-founders building core software infrastructure for the AI era. We invest at day zero, partnering with builders creating the systems that power modern AI — across software infrastructure, AI engineering, developer tools, and intelligent systems. Notable investments include Modal, Runware, Hex, Pydantic, and Higgsfield.

We are also the firm behind AI Council, a global technical conference for engineers building production AI systems. Formerly Data Council, AI Council brings together practitioners across AI, ML, and data engineering for deeply technical insights focused on real systems and real applications. Through events, content, and community, AI Council connects the builders shaping the AI stack today.

MrI7QNGLoR5KFqOBqTCBceJgANc.avif

We support groundbreaking AI & data startups like:

What you will own

Operate AI Council

• Build and run the operating plan across audience growth, sponsorship and ticket sales, marketing, programming, event production, and finance — working closely with the teammates and partners who run each function day to day.
• Own the management rhythm: priorities, metrics, budgets, forecasts, decision logs, and follow-through.
• Develop a clear view of event and business economics; identify the highest-leverage opportunities to grow revenue, improve margin, and strengthen the community.
• Coordinate internal teammates and external partners — including our event production agency — so launches and events move from idea to excellent execution.
• Turn each event into a better system for the next one: capture learning, improve playbooks, and remove recurring failure points.

Extend the Founder’s leverage

• Translate the Founder's priorities across AI Council and Zero Prime into a focused weekly agenda and concrete next actions.
• Prepare meetings, decisions, and communications so the Founder enters the moments that matter with the right context.
• Surface tradeoffs early, close loops, and represent the Founder's intent clearly when they're not in the room.

Take on high-priority work across Zero Prime

• Lead occasional special projects across portfolio support, community, research, partnerships, or fund operations.