Strategic Operations & Finance Manager @ Safari AI

About Safari AI

The Company’s vision is to Automate Action of the leading companies in the physical economy, from Entertainment, QSR’s, Retail and beyond. It’s using computer vision AI to Measure, Alert and provide AI-generated Recommendations at the operations of leading companies such as Merlin/Legoland, Universal Orlando, 7-11, Tanger Outlets, Manhattan Mini Storage, Charlotte Hornets, Calgary Flames, and more. In the near future, Safari AI will use this data and to suggest how its clients can optimize its SOPs to generate more revenue and create more valuable guest and staff experiences.

Safari AI is seed-funded by leading venture capital investors and expects to raise its Series A in 2025.

Leadership & Culture

Safari AI is co-founded by Ali Vahabzadeh & Kaiwen Yuan, two leaders who have meaningful exits under their belts and have managed large, high-performing Go To Market and Engineering teams. The company is headquartered in NYC where the GTM team is based and works from the office five days a week, while Engineering is distributed between North America and Brazil.

About You And How You Succeed At Safari AI

You’re excited about building a product and creating a market that hasn’t been done before. You have a strong bias toward action when you are stuck but are not afraid to ask for help when you need to. You’re high agency, and eager to test new ways of doing things, taking advantage of the freedom and culture an early stage startup can afford you. You’re eager to lead the company’s engagement with category leaders in a variety of industries, solving some of their biggest challenges.

About the Role
We have an exciting opportunity for a hands-on operations and finance pro to report directly to Safari AI’s CEO and manage a meaningful part of the company. You’ll be able to drive mission-critical day-to-day business operations and support the company’s most pressing strategic initiatives to help scale the business.

The Go-To-Market team (everybody except Engineering) is based in New York City and this role would be expected to work from the Safari AI’s midtown Manhattan office at least 4x/week.

What you will be Leading

Lead and support essential business operations functions, including but not limited to Finance, Vendor Management, People Ops, and other everyday functions
Set the company up for scale as it has now crossed a multi-million dollar ARR level
Manage the company model and budget
Partner with internal stakeholders and help drive customer relations as renewal and expansion opportunities present themselves
Contribute to Technical Operations, specifically working with the company’s outsourced partners to label and QA client data
Partner with Sales to lead the response to RFIs and RFPs where the company believes it has a high chance of winning
Help manage key vendor relationships and search for redundancies and savings opportunities as we outgrow existing suppliers
Assist the CEO in future fundraising efforts

Requirements for the Role

Undergraduate degree from a top 30 university
3+ years of experience in Finance, Management Consulting, or similar Operations / Finance / Strategy leadership position at a early- or mid-stage startup, preferably in Enterprise SaaS
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
Detail-oriented with strong organizational and administrative skills
Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
Bias for action with natural ability to multitask
Eager to "eat responsibility" and not wait to be told what to do
Available to travel on an occasional basis

Why bet on Computer Vision and Safari AI?
1. Huge opportunity hiding in plain sight: leveraging already-installed cameras to automate and real-time action on operational data
2. Large chasm between customer knowledge and market availability, i.e. customers don’t know what is available in the market...yet.
3. No clear industry leader in computer vision; everyone is small and unbranded (i.e. no Amazon or Google in the room to compete with)
4. Very modular, allowing Safari AI and its customers to invent whole new use cases on a regular basis
5. Developed the tech and data pipelines over three years and invested several million dollars and is now ready to scale
6. Already the market leader in enterprise CV by working with industry leaders with billions in revenue

Strategic Operations & Finance Manager

Safari AI

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