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.