Chief of Staff / Business Operations Manager

This role has two main components:

(1) Running functions including operations, finance, HR, and legal.

(2) Partnering with the CEO, Founders, and Leadership Team to grow Avela.

Avela is currently organized into five teams, each with a "team lead" - (1) Product, (2) Engineering, (3) Client Services, (4) Marketing, and (5) Sales (currently hiring Sales Lead). That means a lot of miscellaneous responsibilities - including operations, finance, HR / People Ops, recruiting, office management, and special projects - don't have an owner and currently fall on the CEO's plate. You'll work closely with the CEO and take over many of the responsibilities. (Right now, there's not enough of these to warrant another team/lead, but certainly in the future.) As Avela grows, some of these functions might split off into their own function (e.g. a People Lead), and some functions will remain centralized under you.

We also occasionally need additional support for other teams during peak times, such as helping on product/engineering with QA testing, helping with customer support writing help desk articles, helping marketing with conference preparation, managing sales operations, or handling customer invoicing. You'll have the opportunity to jump in to help all teams during crunch times to keep the business running smoothly.

This role can go by many names and is probably a hybrid of all of them: Chief of Staff, Office Manager, Business Operations Associate/Manager, BizOps, People Ops, and Chief Operating Officer.

We're looking for early/mid career professionals on a rapid trajectory looking for a 2-3 year tour of duty to accelerate your career in edtech, entrepreneurship, or business operations.

Role Overview and Key Components

• Business Operations / Finance 30% – Support finance, bookkeeping, AR/AP, business operations, security/compliance, and legal responsibilities, including our third-party contractors (e.g. Pilot for bookkeeping/finance, Acceleron for legal, etc). This also includes all business filings, including taxes, state registrations, Statements of Information, etc.
• HR / People Operations / Recruiting 30% - Handle HR-related issues, including payroll, team culture, offsites/retreats, compliance, and more. You'll also drive recruiting, including reviewing inbound resumes, scheduling interviews, sending outbound messages, and conducting first phone screens. You'll help manage our HRIS and Benefits Platform, Gusto.
• Cross Functional Support / CEO Extension 20% – Support the CEO with a wide variety of tasks, including with marketing and business development, fundraising, investor relations/updates, and more. Currently, this will certainly mean supporting our business development, sales, and marketing initiatives as that team is currently the most underfunded. Examples include RFP responses, lead generation, collecting data, content creation, event planning, and more!
• Special Projects 20% – Initiative and special projects focused on solving high priority problems, testing hypotheses, developing repeatable processes, and hiring individuals to manage them on an ongoing basis. These could be a short as 1 week sprints or as long as 2-3 month initiatives. Projects will evolve a lot as we grow/mature, and some examples of current needs are listed below. One of the largest projects will be establishing our OKR/metrics cadence in 2023 and then fundraising in 2024

Example Tasks // Day in the Life

• Business Metrics and OKRs - Implement OKR system across teams and set up tracking mechanism and dashboards. Provide CEO with monthly business metrics such as revenue, ARR/CARR, gross burn, runway, MAUs, etc.
• Performance Management - Implement 360-degree reviews and organizational wide assessment to support leadership team and board manage and reward performance.
• Financial Modeling - Build a business model for Avela and use it to support budgeting, resource allocation, and fundraising. We need to update our 409a valuation soon, and you'd drive that process.
• Investor Relations - Help with monthly investor updates by collecting metrics, summarizing accomplishments, and fielding questions from investors about the state of the business.
• Fundraising - Support with the Series A financing in 2024 (we just raised a seed round in 2022), which could include building the pitch deck, organizing the data room, doing investor outreach, building a financial model, scheduling meetings, and supporting follow-up.
• Treasury and Cash Management - Deal with fallout from banking failures (e.g. SVB) and quickly diversify our cash management practices by opening new accounts, checking FDIC insurance limits, and ensuring
• R&D Tax Credit - Work with our tax team to ensure qualification for the R&D tax credit each year.
• Security and Compliance - Partner with technical leads to oversee organizational processes and operating procedures to maintain a strong security posture and compliance with standards including SOC 2, FedRAMP, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.
• HR Paperwork & State Registration - Ensure paperwork is filed in new states so that payroll can be paid and that unemployment insurance and workers compensation plans meet requirements. Additional
• Accounts Payable - Review invoices for accuracy and ensure contractors, vendors, and other service providers are paid in a timely (net 30) basis. 
• Accounts Receivable - Generate invoices for customers, follow up on payments from customers, and ensure prompt payment to ensure smooth cashflow.
• Mail - You'll set up a virtual mailbox and/or physical office to receive official correspondence, including taxes, registration paperwork, and other business filings.
• Swag - Order gifts for the team, customers, and marketing prospects, such as t-shirts, pens, notepads, water bottles, and more. You'll also ship them out to conferences or new hires as needed.
• Vendor Management - Negotiate and sign contracts with critical vendors supporting Avela (e.g. Amazon, Google, Asana, Github, Hasura, Zoom, Twilio, WeGlot, etc.)
• Project Management - Help CEO and leadership team ensure critical projects are executed efficiently and delivered on time. This will include some projects you own, and others you are supporting.
• Culture and Team Building - Facilitate birthday and anniversary celebrations. Implement virtual programs, such as coffee chats, unconferences, discussion boards, and more to ensure a connected and collaborative team culture, including team events (below).
• Team Events - Organize biannual team offsites and retreats, and coordinate other team-related events. This includes setting agendas, coordinating speakers/sessions, booking hotels, booking conference rooms, and facilitating travel.
• Recruiting - Temporarily lead recruiting efforts, until we eventually hire a Recruiter. This includes outbound prospecting (finding candidates on LinkedIn and messaging them), inbound candidate resume review, interview coordination, and new hire outreach. 
• Administrative Assistance - While there's unlikely to be much scheduling support (since we use Calendly) or travel work (since I'm too particular), you’ll certainly do some random support and EA-type work, such as booking reservations, ad hoc ordering, planning, etc.
• Marketing Research - Help the business development team build lists of potential customers, research prospects, and generate data for outbound campaigns.
• Anything Unassigned - As a small, 25-person company, most jobs don’t have an “owner.” You’ll be the default lead for anything that doesn’t fall within another team’s purview (product, engineering, sales, marketing, professional services, or customer success). 
• 401k / Retirement Programs - Research retirement account providers, select the best one, and implement a 401k program at Avela. [This was just completed, but leaving it on as an example of something you would have done.]
• Family and Medical Leave - Collect best practices and state policies regarding family and medical leave policies to craft Avela's updated formal FML policy. [This was just completed, but leaving it on as an example of something you would have done.]

Criteria

• Mission-driven, demonstrated commitment to education or equity
• Experience with as several of the Example Tasks above (experience with all not necessary)
• Experience in a variety of highly effective corporate environments
• Hustle, scrappy, ability to get a lot done with limited resources
• Entrepreneurial, Comfort with Ambiguity
• Project Management Experience
• Highly Structured and Organized
• Detail Oriented
• Fast Learner
• US-Based with Work Authorization
• Strong preference for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, or Boston-based candidates.

Compensation

• Mid-level to Senior Individual Contributor (P3-P5)
• Salary: $85,000 - $135,000
• Equity: 5,000 - 40,000 options/shares
• We give all candidates three package options, with different levels of cash compensation (salary) and stock options (equity). We try to pay competitive salaries and exceptionally strong equity packages, as we want everyone to share in the upside when Avela makes it big! 
• Of course, we are an early stage, education startup, and so cash salaries won’t quite be comparable to larger or better funded organizations. But what we lack in cash, we make up for in upside, impact, and fun!  We also hope our financial discipline gives you confidence in our long-term potential and incredibly low likelihood of layoffs, like many of our less disciplined counterparts.

Company

Avela is a Nobel Prize-winning edtech startup building the first universal application for PK-12 education, daycare, and enrichment programs, promoting equity and access to education.

For students and families, this simplifies the process of finding and applying to educational programming. For schools and districts, this streamlines operations and helps increase enrollment (and hence, revenue).

We sell our application and enrollment platform directly to school districts, charter networks, other educational providers, cities, and states. We work with school districts and charter networks across the country, including in Oakland, Seattle, Hartford, Tulsa, New Orleans, Newark, and Jersey City. We also work with a range of nonprofits and NGOs, including Teach for America and the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as the US Military.

Our platform has four parts to cover each stage of the application journey, from exploring options to applying and final selection and admission:

Avela Explore - Mobile-optimized school finder and opportunity navigator

Avela Apply - Streamlined application management system and tracking

Avela Match - Research-based admission and student assignment lottery system.

We also offer a range of consulting services to help districts implement enrollment reforms and advance equity in educational programs.

Learn more at avela.org.

Team

Avela was founded by a renowned team of visionaries, including Nobel Laureate Joshua Angrist, Clark Medalist Parag Pathak, and social entrepreneur Greg Bybee. We have a passionate team of entrepreneurs, engineers, economists, and data scientists - get to know us at https://avela.org/team. 

Benefits

We love our team and care about their wellness. We strive to offer the best benefits of our peers, including:

-- Significant equity

-- Flexible work policies

-- Unlimited vacation

-- Home office stipend or WeWork membership

-- 401(k) program

-- Flexible Savings Account (FSA)

-- Dependent Care Saving Plan (DCFSA)

-- Commuter Benefits

-- Life Insurance by Guardian (covered 100%)

-- Platinum Medical Plan by UnitedHealthcare (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)

-- Platinum Dental Plan by Guardian Health (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)

-- Platinum Vision Plan by Guardian Health (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)

Learn more at avela.org/careers.

Location

We are a flexible, fully remote company; however all full time employees must live in the United States and meet the work authorization and remote collaboration policies below. #LI-Remote

Work Authorization

Although we are strongly supportive of immigrants and individuals of all backgrounds, unfortunately, as a small startup, we are not in a position to sponsor visas and are only able to consider candidates who are authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship. We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to working together in the future.

Remote Working and Collaboration Norms

As a remote-first company, we think deeply about aligning on shared values and collaboration norms. We trust our team and empower everyone to find the right balance for their productivity, but also seek to facilitate synchronous collaboration and minimize asynchronous latency.

We ask everyone to have access to a quiet environment, free from distractions during working hours with high speed broadband internet. (One of our benefits is that we'll cover a WeWork membership!) Our default is video-on for meetings to foster relationships and allow non-verbal communication cues to come through, however we

For full time roles, we expect colleagues to work a normal business day in a timezone of their choice, so long as there's overlap from 12pm - 6pm ET. This ensures sufficient time for synchronous collaboration, but also facilitates flexibility in your schedule. (We are open to other working arrangements, but this must be approved in advance before joining.) We also expect full time employees to join for biannual week-long team offsites (we cover the costs, of course).

We Encourage You To Apply

Avela is a safe, inclusive workplace for people of all backgrounds and walks of life. We strongly encourage you to apply if you are from a marginalized or underrepresented group, even if you don't meet all of the job requirements. If you believe this is a role that you’ll be excited to work in every day, want to be a part of a culture like ours, and will be relentless about pushing boundaries to succeed, please apply.