Founders Pod Leader

• Business outcomes. Every student in your city is building a real company toward $1M in profit. Whether they make progress — real revenue, real customers, a real path — is your number. You coach it, you push it, you're accountable for it.

• Academic outcomes. Students hit their grade-level academic bar (1400 SAT freshman year, 1500 sophomore, on-pace coursework) or they don't. You own the standard, you run the interventions, you don't let anyone drift.

• Enrollment growth. Your city grows because you make it grow. You run the events, build the local presence, work the families from interest to enrolled, and fill next year's cohort.

• The culture and operation of your city. The vibe, the standards, the daily rhythm, the parent relationships, the local reputation. Your city runs like a high-performing startup or it doesn't, and that's on you.

• Coaching your student founders 1:1 through strategy, execution, and growth — the core of the week. Where each founder is stuck, the highest-leverage move, the thing they're avoiding, and holding them to it until it's done.

• Running the daily program: standups, debriefs, workshops, founder dinners, the accountability rhythm that keeps a cohort of teenagers shipping instead of drifting.

• Owning the academic bar. Watching the Timeback data, spotting the student who's slipping a week before it's a crisis, running the catch-up process, and making sure nobody falls through the cracks in a program this small.

• Running enrollment for your city. Info sessions, parent dinners, "day in the life" events, tours, local partnerships — designing them, hosting them, being the warm face every prospective family meets, and personally working leads from first contact to signed enrollment.

• Building the local community and reputation. You are Founders School in your city. Families, partner orgs, and the local scene know who you are and what the program is because of you.

• Being the single point of accountability. When Nat and Cameron want to know how your city is doing — on students, on academics, on enrollment — you're the one with the answer and the plan.

• Teaching academics or writing curriculum. Timeback delivers the academic content. You own whether students hit the bar — you don't lecture, tutor, or build lesson plans.

• Following a fixed program script. The rhythm has structure, but what you do with each student and how you grow your city is yours to figure out based on what's actually in front of you.

• Waiting for headquarters to solve your problems. You escalate what genuinely needs Nat or Cameron; you handle the rest. This is a run-it role, not a report-up role.

• Handing enrollment to a marketing team. In your city, you are the marketing team and the closer. Central marketing gives you brand and materials, admissions happens in the middle of the enrollment funnel, and you bring the local energy and you close.

• Managing a big staff. Early on you are in charge of everything on your campus. As your enrollment grows, your team will grow with you, but if hands-on work sounds beneath you, this is the wrong role.

• Coasting on a good product. The program is excellent, but a city doesn't grow itself and students don't succeed on autopilot. Both take you, every week.

Monday standup. Your cohort is in a circle. One founder did $600 in revenue last week — you push her to figure out how she 3x's it. Another spent the week "researching" and shipped nothing — you call it directly. A third is behind on academics after a big sales push, so before lunch you've adjusted his afternoon schedule and put him on a catch-up plan. By the end of standup every student has a number for the week and knows you'll be checking it.

Wednesday evening info session. Fourteen prospective families are in your space. You set it up, you briefed a current parent to speak, and you've spent the last week making sure the on-the-fence families actually show. By the end of the night you've made personal contact with every family in the room, and by Thursday morning you have notes on each, three follow-up calls booked, and one warm lead you think you can close for next year's cohort.

Friday review. You pull the week together across both halves of the job. Where's every student on their business and their academics. Which two families moved forward in the enrollment pipeline and which one went cold. You know your city cold — the numbers, the bottlenecks, and the specific moves for next week — and you can give Nat and Cameron the whole picture in five minutes.

• Your students are succeeding — on business and academics. Real revenue and real customers on one side, the academic bar held on the other. Not "exploring entrepreneurship" and not "mostly on track." Measurable progress toward $1M, and nobody falling behind academically. Both, at once, are yours.

• Your city is growing. Next year's cohort is bigger and better than this year's because you filled it. Enrollment is a number you own, and it's going up, or you're figuring out exactly why it isn't.

• Your city runs like the flagship. The culture, the standards, the parent experience, the local reputation — a family in your city should get the same program a family in NYC gets, because you're running it to the same bar.

At 12 months, your first cohort has real businesses with real traction, every student has held the academic line, and you've grown enrollment for next year. You've built the local playbook — the coaching rhythm, the academic process, the enrollment engine — that proves a Founders School city can run outside the flagship.

As Founders School expands to more cities, the Pod Leaders who deliver become City Directors and eventually regional leaders — running multiple cities, hiring and training the next wave of Pod Leaders, and owning a whole region's outcomes. The people in these seats now are proving the model that lets the program scale nationally. You're getting in early enough to define what running a Founders School city even looks like.

• You have built a real business. You've started something from zero, sold it, and made it work — ideally past a meaningful revenue bar. You can't coach teenagers to build companies if you've never done it yourself.

• You can run a whole operation, not just a slice. You've owned a P&L, run a location, led a founding team, or been the person the buck stopped with for a real outcome. You're comfortable holding student outcomes and enrollment growth at the same time without dropping either.

• You can sell. Enrollment is half the job. You've sold something hard to a thoughtful buyer — customers, investors, families — and you can talk to parents without sounding like a salesperson. If closing a family on their kid's education makes you squeamish, this is the wrong role.

• You are AI-native. You use AI daily in your own work and you can model and coach top-tier AI fluency for students. You don't need to build custom agents, but you're clearly ahead of the curve, not behind it.

• You are direct. You give teenagers and parents honest feedback without softening it into mush and without making it personal. Standups where nobody gets called out are standups where nobody improves.

• You are energized by teenagers, not drained by them. This is a high-contact, every-day role. You're with your students constantly.

• You are willing to relocate to and live in your assigned city. This is an in-building role — there is no remote version.

• You are legally authorized to work in the United States.

• Founded or run multiple ventures, or held a general-manager/city-lead role where you owned the whole number.

• Experience building community or running events that grew — you'll be doing this to fill your cohort.

• Experience coaching or managing young people — teens, early-career, cohort programs, accelerators.

• A real network in your assigned city: parents, founders, school leaders, local operators. Shortens the ramp on enrollment.

• A career educator. We are actively biased against a K-12 background here. If your instinct when a student struggles is to explain the theory instead of sitting down and building with them, you'll fail. Your primary identity has to be builder and operator, not teacher.

• A specialist who only wants one half of the job. If you love coaching but won't fill a room, or you love enrollment but can't coach a founder, this isn't for you. The role is both, on purpose.

• A corporate manager without zero-to-one experience. Running a division inside a big company is not the same as building something from nothing and being the person it all depends on.

• Anyone who needs a playbook, a boss down the hall, and a defined lane. You are running a city. It's undefined by design, and you're the one who defines it.

• Anyone who needs to be remote. Running a city means being in it.