Venture Programs & Operations Apprentice/Fellow (Consumer Goods Venture)

The Short Version

You’ll work with an exceptional founder to help operationalize a consumer venture from nothing. Not optimizing supply chains. Not running existing ops. The first cost model, the first contract, the first shipment. From blank page to product in a customer’s hand.

What Liminal Is

Liminal is a Founders’ Studio. We co-build with repeat founders – many of them unicorn founders – providing build expertise, capital, and unfair access from founding to Series B. We call ourselves a Founders’ Studio because “venture studio” undersells what we do and oversells what most of them deliver. This role sits within a new consumer health and wellness venture being built alongside experienced operators and founders.

What This Role Actually Is

• This role sits within a new consumer health and wellness venture being built alongside experienced operators and founders.
• Most people like startup ideas. Very few people like operational reality. This role is for the second type.

You’re the person who instinctively asks

• What’s the margin profile?
• What’s the tooling lead time?
• What happens if freight costs spike?
• Where are the operational bottlenecks?
• Is this supplier reliable?
• What breaks at scale?

You’ll work directly with founders helping coordinate the operational backbone of the venture

• Manufacturing, logistics & supply chain
• Execution planning & costing
• Operational systems
• Vendor management
• You should enjoy bringing order to ambiguity.

The Work

Manufacturing and supply chain coordination: Work with suppliers, factories, and external partners across timelines, production planning, tooling, prototyping, and operational execution.

Financial and cost analysis: Build costing models, pricing analyses, freight estimates, and operational financial breakdowns. Understand margins deeply.

Execution management: Track moving pieces relentlessly – deadlines, deliverables, prototypes, contracts, vendor updates, operational dependencies

Vendor and factory communication: Coordinate across manufacturing and supplier relationships, including overseas stakeholders. Mandarin / Chinese language capability is a strong advantage.

Contracts and operational documentation: Support commercial agreements, operational workflows, and process documentation as the company scales.

Founder support: Operate closely alongside leaders to ensure operational momentum stays high and blockers are solved quickly.

Who You Are

• Operationally sharp: You naturally think in systems, dependencies, timelines, and execution pathways.
• Pathological attention to detail: You notice inconsistencies others miss. Precision matters to you.
• Numerically comfortable: Spreadsheets don’t intimidate you. You enjoy understanding cost structures and operational economics.
• Calm under pressure: Startups are messy. You can prioritize, adapt, and keep moving.
• Strong work ethic: This role requires ownership and intensity. Sometimes timelines compress. Sometimes things go wrong. You stay steady.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: You won’t always receive perfect instructions or polished systems. You should be able to create structure proactively.
• Independent thinker: You challenge assumptions thoughtfully and care more about getting to the right answer than protecting your ego.

Unicorn Points If

• You’ve operated inside startups or founder-led environments
• You enjoy building systems from scratch
• You have experience in operations, consulting, finance, manufacturing, or supply chain environments
• You’ve worked with suppliers, factories, or logistics partners before
• You speak Mandarin / Chinese, as this role may involve regular communication with Mandarin-speaking suppliers and manufacturers.

Fellowship, Not Internship

Twelve months. Meaningful stipend. Embedded directly within a live venture alongside experienced builders and founders. Not watching from the sidelines. Real operational exposure during the earliest stages of venture creation.

If you’ve been looking for a way into startup operations, consumer goods, or zero-to-one execution environments – this is the door.