---
title: 'General Counsel at Outset'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/general-counsel-outset-san-francisco-nz6hk402nd4k'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# General Counsel at Outset

- **Company:** Outset
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $240k–$300k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-24
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/outset/2f74bd49-04dc-424e-b493-62fb8c307bb2

## Job description

Outset invented a better way to do research: AI-powered user interviews.

Global brands like Hubspot, Microsoft, Uber and Nestle use Outset to achieve deeper, qualitative insights about their users at unprecedented speed and scale.

The research industry is massive (>$140B and growing) and ripe for disruption. Incumbents are outdated, slow, and burdened by high-cost services. That's our opportunity.

Outset is backed by top Silicon Valley investors and raised a $30M Series B in December 2025—less than six months after our Series A—led by Radical Ventures with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s venture arm), 8VC, Y Combinator, and Adverb Ventures.

The raise follows a breakout year, with our business growing 8x as enterprise customers across industries adopt our category, AI‑moderated research, as the new standard for understanding people.

We’re a tight-knit team serving some of the world’s largest enterprises.

We're hiring our first General Counsel to build the legal function from the ground up. You'll be the primary legal advisor, own all corporate legal matters, and partner closely with People, Sales, and Product as we scale. This is a hands-on, builder role.

## RESPONSIBILITIES

- Corporate structure, board governance, cap table matters, and equity administration in partnership with Finance
- Fundraising support (financing rounds, investor due diligence, board consents)
- M&A and strategic partnership evaluation as opportunities arise
- Draft, negotiate, and manage customer contracts (MSAs, DPAs, order forms) for an enterprise SaaS motion
- Vendor and procurement agreements, including AI/data-processing subprocessor terms
- Build scalable contract templates and playbooks so Sales and CS can self-serve on standard terms
- Partner with People and Talent on employment law matters, policy review, and workplace investigations
- Support ACA and multi-state compliance as headcount scales past current thresholds
- Protect and manage the company's IP portfolio (patents, trademarks, trade secrets)
- Manage outside counsel relationships and legal spend across specialty areas (litigation, IP, immigration)
- Serve as the point person for regulatory inquiries, disputes, and risk escalations

## QUALIFICATIONS

- JD and active bar membership (California)
- 7+ years of legal experience, including in-house experience at a high-growth SaaS or tech company
- Direct experience with data privacy/AI regulatory frameworks (GDPR, CCPA)
- Track record negotiating enterprise SaaS commercial agreements
- Comfort operating without a large team
- Sound judgment on when to lean on outside counsel vs. handle in-house

## NICE TO HAVE

- Prior experience as first in-house counsel or building a legal function from scratch
- Exposure to international employment structures (EOR, contractor classification across multiple countries)
- Experience in a company using or building AI products, with familiarity in AI-specific legal/regulatory questions

## About Outset

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Outset is an AI-moderated research platform that combines conversational AI, behavioral intelligence, and emotional analysis to let companies run high-quality qualitative interviews and research studies at massive scale.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Aaron Cannon (CEO) and Michael Hess

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Software Development / AI-Moderated Research & Insights Platform
- **Target customers**: Enterprise research teams (UX/Market/Consumer Insights), large corporations, and product teams (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "The future of innovation begins with listening to humans." Understanding people’s needs, motivations, and behaviors is the hardest and most important challenge for businesses; Outset makes that understanding effortless and scalable.

## Products & Services
- **AI-Moderated Interviews**: Conduct hundreds of AI-moderated interviews simultaneously in any language (video, voice, or text). The AI moderator dynamically probes participants based on audio and visual cues to uncover the "why" behind answers.
- **Instant Synthesis & Analysis**: Automatically generates highly relevant summaries, themes, impactful quotes, and customizable highlight reels based on research objectives, eliminating manual tagging and sifting.
- **Participant Recruitment**: Recruit hundreds of participants directly within the platform, or share an interview link with any external list.
- **Guide Set Up**: Effortlessly set up interview guides using AI, with qualitative/quantitative questions, advanced probing guidelines, and intelligent skipping logic.
- **Easy Stakeholder Shareout**: Get instant top-line reports, custom AI-generated reports, highlight reels, and ready-to-share PowerPoint decks to integrate research into decision-making.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue of USD 8,500,000 (as of latest data). Total Funding of USD 51,250,000.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Lead investors include **Radical Ventures** (Series B), **8VC** (Series A), with participation from 24 investors in earlier rounds. Trusted by enterprises like **Microsoft**, **Nestle**, **Uber**, **Hubspot**, and **Away**.
- **Growth Signals**: Massive headcount growth of **+563.6% year-over-year** (now 54 employees). Customer research coverage from 1.1B+ possible participants across 85+ countries, with over 500K studies run on the platform.

## Competitive Advantages
- Proprietary AI that bridges the "say-do gap" by probing in real-time based on audio and visual cues, not just recall.
- Multi-modal, multi-lingual scaling: enables research in any language, at any timezone, with continuous, multithreaded AI-moderated conversations.
- Enterprise-grade simplicity: designed for large research teams, removing scheduling friction and operations overhead so research happens in days, not months.
- End-to-end platform: from participant recruitment, guide setup, AI-moderation, to instant analysis and stakeholder shareout — a single integrated suite.

## Strategic Focus
- Expand leadership in replacing traditional, slow qualitative research (surveys, live interviews) with instant, scalable AI-moderated studies.
- Deepen enterprise penetration with top-tier clients (Microsoft, Nestle, Uber, HubSpot) by continuing to add advanced behavioral and emotional analysis features.
- Scale the platform’s capabilities to cover the entire research lifecycle more comprehensively, continuing to invest heavily in R&D.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: "Supportive founders and seasoned investors foster community, without startup toxicity." Team is described as "smart, kind, and driven teammates who know how to make work fun." Founders are very hands-on and accessible.
- **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: Primarily in-office at a "million-dollar office space" in SF with sweeping views and quick access to Market Street.
- **Notable perks**: Daily catered lunches and snacks with flexible dietary options, unlimited PTO, comprehensive health insurance (medical/dental/vision), unlimited budget for productivity tools, commuter benefits, allowance for continuing education, 401k with 6% match.
- **Engineering culture**: A strong technical focus (backend and frontend engineers) working on state-of-the-art AI and NLP. 9 active job postings across sales, engineering, marketing, design, and operations.
- **Who should apply**: People passionate about AI, user research, and building products that make human understanding scalable. The company values balance, growth, and high-impact work without "startup toxicity."

## Sources
1. [outset.ai](https://outset.ai/)
2. [outset.ai/careers](https://outset.ai/careers)
3. [linkedin.com/company/outset-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/outset-ai)
4. [ycombinator.com/companies/outset](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/outset)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/outset](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/outset)

## Other roles at Outset

- [Research Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/research-manager-outset-san-francisco-9gv2eapx6xyq) — San Francisco, CA
- [Program Manager - Research Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/program-manager-research-operations-outset-san-francisco-4h9qpq7d39j0) — San Francisco, CA
- [Enterprise Sales Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-sales-manager-outset-san-francisco-2nwx1wkrfwmz) — San Francisco, CA
- [Sourcer (Temporary)](https://feeny.ai/job/sourcer-temporary-outset-san-francisco-tv7xa2kmea1s) — San Francisco, CA
- [Customer Support Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-support-engineer-outset-san-francisco-wbjdbqge1vn7) — San Francisco, CA
- [Product Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/product-designer-outset-san-francisco-2hcx36egc9yy) — San Francisco, CA
- [Forward Deployed Software Engineer (EU)](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-software-engineer-eu-outset-europe-hgmhys40safb) — Europe
- [Backend Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/backend-software-engineer-outset-san-francisco-28qkfcnaq2xf) — San Francisco, CA
- [Frontend Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/frontend-software-engineer-outset-san-francisco-qmte0s0j6pd9) — San Francisco, CA
- [Enterprise Account Executive - NYC](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-account-executive-nyc-outset-new-york-03n5ma0z3v18) — New York, NY