Founders Office

Protein design infrastructure barely exists in India. Mandrake Bio is building it: AI tools and research infrastructure for protein engineering and gene editing, ten people, seed stage, working from Bengaluru.

The founder's background spans climate tech, agri-insurance, and startup investing. The team runs on first-principles thinking over consensus. Everyone is expected to understand what others are working on and help unblock them.

Foundational science, built from India for the world.

Mandrake Bio is ten people building foundational protein design infrastructure from Bengaluru, and everything around the science needs to move at the same pace as the science itself: the ops, the program management, the strategic decisions that shape what the company becomes.

This seat sits with the founder daily. Technical program management and strategic decision-making are the core of the job. You need enough depth in the science to set credible timelines and jam on technical problems, and enough range to help think through the calls where the data runs out. The first stretch is solo, high-ownership, and fast. Fundraising support, investor relations, hiring, financial planning: it all lands on your desk. You treat it like your own company, because at this stage, it nearly is.

• The founder's operational surface. Everything the founder currently holds outside the science itself transfers to you: ops, planning, coordination, so the founder can go deeper on the tech side.

• Technical program management. Set timelines across protein design and gene editing workstreams with enough depth (the founder's bar: roughly 50% of what each team member holds) to make those timelines credible and unblock people when they stall.

• Strategic decision-making alongside the founder. When the data runs out, you brainstorm from first principles, pressure-test options, and help the founder make the call. You are the thinking partner, not the note-taker.

• Fundraising and investor relations. Prep materials, manage the investor pipeline, support the founder through rounds. You own the process so the founder owns the conversation.

• Hiring. Source, screen, and close the next wave of hires. At ten people, every seat changes the company; you hold the bar.

• Financial planning. Budgets, burn, runway visibility. You keep the numbers honest and the founder informed.

• You've worked at an early-stage company building something from scratch. Late-stage corporate ops is a different muscle. You know what ambiguity feels like and you move through it, not around it.

• Technical program management is a strength, not a stretch. You've set timelines on technical work before, held teams to them, and adjusted when reality shifted. Ideally in deep tech: biotech, AI, hardware, climate tech.

• You think in first principles, not frameworks. When the data runs out, you reason from the ground up. You brainstorm with the founder, not just execute what's handed to you.

• You're proactive to the point of relentlessness. You walk into the room and say, "This is pending. This is what needs to be done. Here's what I did." You do not wait to be asked.

• You've spent time in VC, strategy, or ops roles at strong companies. You've navigated ambiguity, made calls with incomplete information, and operated across multiple verticals at once.

• You genuinely connect with the people around you. On day one, you talk to everyone. You learn what they're struggling with. You figure out how to help. The team trusts you because you earned it, not because of your title.

• You treat the company like it's yours. Ownership is not a word on your resume. It is how you operate: you hold the outcome, not just the task.

• First principles over consensus. We reason from the ground up. If the logic holds, the seniority of the person who said it does not matter.

• Understand what others are building. Everyone is expected to know what the rest of the team is working on. Not surface-level awareness; enough depth to help unblock them.

• Be proactive, not reactive. Surface problems before they surface themselves. Bring the solution alongside the flag.

• Move at the pace of the science. The ops, the hiring, the planning: none of it gets to be the bottleneck. The science sets the clock.

• Get stuff done. Bias toward action. A good decision made today beats a perfect decision made next week.

• Hold ownership end to end. Pick up the thing, carry it to completion, and close the loop. No handoffs into the void.

Seed-stage seat, direct to the founder. Cash compensation of 20 to 30 lakhs per year, plus 20 lakhs in ESOPs over four years with standard vesting. A founding-level role at a company building protein design infrastructure from India.