Fractional CEO / Growth Partner / Co-Founder

Company: Arise Labs LLC

Location: Austin, TX (Hybrid / Local Preferred)

Role Type: Executive Co-Founder & CEO

Compensation: 20% Co-Founder Equity Stake + 3–5% Capital Success Fee + Executive Salary upon Seed Close

Arise Labs is an Austin-based AI infrastructure and systems lab building private, enterprise-grade cognitive architectures. We move beyond superficial public API wrappers to solve a critical corporate challenge: operational transparency, diagnostic clarity, and root-cause analysis across complex organizations.

Rooted in lean engineering principles—specifically root-cause analysis like the Ishikawa (Fishbone) diagnostic framework—our multi-agent routing engines allow Boards of Directors and C-suite leadership to query high-level operational strategy and trace answers with complete contextual accuracy all the way down to individual codebases, telemetry streams, and frontline execution layers.

We leverage custom fine-tuned model topologies, on-prem/private cloud orchestration, and local inference engines (vLLM) to deliver total data sovereignty and predictable operational scaling.

The Opportunity & Mission

Technical Founder Chad Gauthier has established the core architecture, private inference pipelines, and technical vision. We are seeking a visionary, mission-aligned Co-Founder & CEO to partner closely with Chad, lead commercial strategy, secure institutional capital/cloud credits, and build Arise Labs into an enterprise market leader.

This role is ideal for a seasoned operator, EIR, or venture builder in Austin who wants a true co-founder partnership backed by deep technical execution.

Primary Responsibilities

• Capitalization & Investor Relations: Lead seed/angel fundraising strategy, cultivate relationships with institutional VC funds and strategic angel syndicates, and close initial capital tranches.
• Non-Dilutive Resource Acquisition: Secure enterprise startup credits and compute allocations across major cloud ecosystems (AWS, GCP, Azure, NVIDIA Inception).
• Commercial Go-To-Market (GTM): Package our executive diagnostic and C-suite task routing architecture into high-value enterprise pilot allocations.
• Corporate Strategy & Governance: Define financial models, pricing tiers, and governance frameworks that align long-term board requirements with sustainable revenue.
• Co-Founder Partnership: Act as the strategic commercial counterpart to technical leadership, ensuring product capabilities directly serve real-world market demands.

Transparent Equity & Compensation Framework

To establish complete trust from Day 1, Arise Labs operates under a radically transparent pre-money cap table. We believe executive execution and fundraising are co-equal with technical architecture.

Capitalization Table (Pre-Money)

Shareholder / Reserve Role / Function Equity Ownership

Chad Gauthier / Technical Founder & Chief Architect / 30.0%Incoming CEO

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer / 20.0% Option & Advisory Pool

Future Key Hires, Engineering & Advisors / 10.0%

Capital Allocation Reserve Allocated for Investors (Seed / Angel Round)/ 40.0%Total