---
title: 'Chief Executive Officer - Stealth Startup at Unusual Ventures'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/chief-executive-officer-stealth-startup-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-qcbz6pgkm8jx'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Chief Executive Officer - Stealth Startup at Unusual Ventures

- **Company:** Unusual Ventures
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-06-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/unusual/c5d582d0-56ee-48b7-906c-d0d1f8d429e4

## Job description

## Overview

Unusual Ventures is seeking a strategic, visionary, and execution-driven Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to lead a portfolio company's overall direction, growth, and success. The CEO will set the vision, drive business performance, build a strong leadership team, and create long-term enterprise value through a category-defining B2B software company. About Unusual Ventures: We lead pre-seed to Series A investments in enterprise software startups across infrastructure, developer tools, security, AI/ML, and data, with a focus on supporting founders as they journey from insight to product-market fit. Our expert team of operators works alongside our founders on everything from positioning to recruiting to enterprise sales, leveraging decades of practical experience to improve your odds of success.

## Key Responsibilities

- Define and communicate the company's vision, mission, and long-term strategy
- Drive overall business growth, ARR expansion, and enterprise market penetration
- Build, lead, and mentor the executive leadership team (CTO, VP Product, VP Sales, VP Engineering, etc.)
- Make high-level strategic decisions on product roadmap, GTM motion, partnerships, and capital allocation
- Represent the company to investors, board members, enterprise customers, and external stakeholders
- Lead fundraising efforts, investor relations, and capital allocation across institutional rounds
- Own design partner and early enterprise customer relationships through the zero-to-one phase
- Establish company culture, values, and leadership principles
- Monitor performance metrics (ARR, NRR, CAC payback, pipeline coverage) and ensure execution against goals
- Identify new opportunities for innovation and competitive advantage

## Requirements

- 15+ years of leadership experience at enterprise software or B2B SaaS companies, with prior executive-level roles
- Proven track record of scaling an enterprise software company or business unit (ideally from sub-$10M to $100M+ ARR)
- Strong business acumen across product, technology, and enterprise go-to-market functions
- Experience selling, building, or operating in complex enterprise sales environments (six- and seven-figure ACVs, multi-stakeholder deal cycles)
- Experience with venture fundraising, investor relations, and board management at venture-backed companies
- Demonstrated ability to lead high-performing teams across engineering, product, and GTM
- Exceptional communication, decision-making, and leadership skills

## Nice to Have

- Prior experience as a CEO, Founder, or founding executive at a venture-backed enterprise software startup
- Operating experience at companies in Unusual's core investment areas: cloud infrastructure, developer tools, cybersecurity, AI/ML platforms, or data infrastructure
- Track record building category-defining products serving technical buyers (engineering, security, data, platform teams)
- Experience navigating early-stage enterprise GTM (design partners, founding AE hires, first $1M-$10M ARR)
- MBA or advanced technical degree (CS, engineering)

## About Unusual Ventures

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: A venture capital firm that provides hands-on operational support and a dedicated engagement model to help technical founders of enterprise AI software startups achieve product-market fit.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture capital fund)
- **Headquarters**: Menlo Park, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2018
- **Founders**: Jyoti Bansal and John Vrionis

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Venture Capital / Financial Services, with a focus on seed-stage enterprise AI software startups.
- **Target customers**: Technical founders of early-stage startups (B2B through founders).
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Raise the bar for what founders should expect from their venture investors” and give technical founders the best odds of finding product-market fit.

## Products & Services
- **Unusual Venture Capital**: Seed-stage investment in enterprise AI software startups.
- **Unusual Founder Services**: A team of full-time operators embedded with portfolio companies to execute customer discovery, go-to-market strategy, and product-market fit work.
- **Unusual Academy**: An immersive program where founders work side by side with Unusual’s founders and expert operators.
- **Community & Events**: Quarterly founders events, founder academy, monthly intimate dinners with customer prospects, and go-to-market tools.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (private fund; not publicly disclosed).
- **Key Metric**: 20 employees (as of latest data); 51,647 LinkedIn followers (+16.5% yearly); 10 active job postings (+100% yearly).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: LPs are primarily non-profits (hospitals, foundations, HBCUs). Portfolio companies include Rime (powers nearly 100 million phone calls/month for clients like Mayo Clinic, Dialpad, Upstart, and Asurion). Co-founder Jyoti Bansal is one of only 16 people to build two companies surpassing $100M in revenue (AppDynamics and Harness).
- **Growth Signals**: Portfolio companies raise follow-on rounds at valuations “significantly above industry averages.” The firm has seen a 100% increase in job postings year-over-year.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Full-time operator model**: Unlike traditional VCs, Unusual embeds dedicated operators who do the work alongside founders, not just advise.
- **Concentrated portfolio**: Makes a small number of investments each year, giving each founder full attention.
- **Proven founders**: Jyoti Bansal (AppDynamics, Harness) and John Vrionis (30+ billion-dollar outcomes) bring deep first-hand experience.
- **The Unusual Method**: A purpose-built framework for product-market fit, refined through thousands of customer conversations.
- **LP alignment**: LPs are primarily non-profits, creating a “forces for good” ethos.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue investing in seed-stage enterprise AI software startups.
- Expand the Unusual Method and Founder Services to increase portfolio success rates.
- Build a close-knit, supportive founder community to drive repeatable PMF.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Forces for good” – employees work with a mission-driven team committed to founders through the hard phases. 5.0/5.0 employer rating (1 review) with high marks for work-life balance, compensation, and career growth.
- **Work environment**: Small team (20 people) with high impact. Offices in Menlo Park (HQ) and San Francisco; team also distributed across the US and Australia. Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated, but the presence of multiple offices suggests flexibility.
- **Notable perks**: Opportunity to work alongside top technical founders and industry veterans; direct involvement in the product-market fit process; exposure to a concentrated portfolio of cutting-edge AI startups.
- **Career path**: Roles across venture operations, sales, finance, and programs. The firm actively hires for roles that support portfolio companies (e.g., Founding Account Executive, VP of Engineering, Software Engineer) as well as internal functions (e.g., Director of Programs, VP of Sales).

## Sources
1. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/our-story/)
2. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/team/)
3. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/founder-services/)
4. [jobs.lever.co/unusual](https://jobs.lever.co/unusual)
5. [linkedin.com/company/unusualventures](https://linkedin.com/company/unusualventures)

## Other roles at Unusual Ventures

- [Founding Growth Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-growth-lead-unusual-ventures-new-york-kmsxm8vt2jf2) — New York, NY
- [Account Executive - GovSignals](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-govsignals-unusual-ventures-washington-v5qmvvh121zc) — Washington, DC
- [Operating Partner - Founder Services & Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/operating-partner-founder-services-platform-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-b7ffknpmaxhw) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer, Growth - Rime Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-growth-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-s5p7jbey688a) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer, ML Serving - Rime Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-ml-serving-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-ffg0j75y8aq4) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer - Rime Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-ckey6rat0q69) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Account Executive - Roboto AI](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-account-executive-roboto-ai-unusual-ventures-seattle-1z2tsdepcdgx) — Seattle, WA
- [VP of Engineering - Rime.AI](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-engineering-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-8k6p2m5f0qrg) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Engineer - Miravoice](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-engineer-miravoice-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-y6b563tm643v) — San Francisco, CA