Founders Associate Intern
About the job
- Between 0 and 3 years of experience, with strong experience in at least two areas such as investment banking, high-growth startups, management consulting, private equity, or adjacent finance.
- Commercial judgment, resourcefulness, discretion, and the ability to turn an unfamiliar problem into a clear recommendation and act on it.
- Based in San Francisco or able to work on-site there.
- Identify potential clients and partners, develop outreach approaches, and help convert conversations into commercial relationships.
- Research investors, improve fundraising materials, build financial analyses, and coordinate diligence and follow-ups.
- Source and assess candidates, and help create operational processes that support the team.
- Research new opportunities, answer strategic questions, and execute other high-priority founder-led projects.
- Experience across different professional categories is valuable.
About the company
Clera connects professionals with roles at venture-backed startups through an AI career agent that learns their experience, preferences and goals. It focuses on introductions to founders and hiring managers instead of sending candidates into a conventional job application queue. The agent matches profiles to suitable roles, explains the fit and assists with interview preparation and salary negotiation, while employers use a dashboard to review talent and request introductions. Candidates use the service free, and employers pay recruitment fees based on the hired person's first-year base salary. Clera was founded in 2025 and is based in San Francisco.
Company Size
11-50
Company Stage
Seed
Total Funding
$3M
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2025
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Early sales validate demand: founders reported over $1 million in annualized revenue in May 2026.
- Engineers gain broad ownership: Clera's small engineering team owns product slices end to end.
- Clera has real hiring outcomes: Bluealpha's CEO says it recruited two founding engineers for his startup.
What critics are saying
- Customer commitments stay short: Clera lets employers start and stop without monthly fees or long-term contracts.
- Expect six office days: Clera's founding AI engineer role requires working in its San Francisco hacker house.
- Core models belong to outsiders: Clera improves prompts and retrieval while Anthropic, OpenAI and Google supply its language models.
What makes Clera unique
- Clera meets candidates in familiar apps: its agent runs through WhatsApp, iMessage, LinkedIn, Slack and web chat.
- Recruiters work inside AI assistants: Clera's connector searches candidates and requests introductions from ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor.
- Clera publishes its production tools: its open repositories manage background tasks, search clusters and outbound email.
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Benefits
- Company Equity
- Flexible Work Hours
- Hybrid Work Options
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
10%1 year growth
10%2 year growth
23%Clera, a San Francisco-based startup, has launched an AI talent agent that represents job candidates and has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding led by 1984 Ventures. The platform introduces professionals directly to hiring managers at venture-backed startups via email, iMessage and WhatsApp, bypassing traditional application processes. Within months of launching, Clera has surpassed $1 million in annualised revenue and represents over 80,000 professionals across the US and Europe. The AI agent scouts opportunities across more than 600 venture-backed startups, matching candidates with roles based on their career goals and preferences. Unlike most recruitment AI tools that serve employers, Clera focuses on candidate representation, targeting the 70% of professionals who are passively open to opportunities but unwilling to enter conventional application funnels.