Founder & CEO — Industrial Shield

One clip, three sensors, real-time protection for the people who work in the world's toughest environments

Location: Australia

Start date: ASAP

More about the concept here.

Founders Factory builds and funds startups together with exceptional entrepreneurs and the world's leading companies. Created by IPO-exited founders, we offer founders capital, operational support from a team of hands-on experts, and unrivalled access to a coalition of industry-leading corporate partners. Since 2015, Founders Factory's 450+ portfolio companies have secured 500+ pilots and commercial contracts with our partners.

Our Studio partners with entrepreneurs at day one, developing new ideas, technologies and business models into high-growth companies. In partnership with a leading global industrial technology partner, we are building a new portfolio of ventures.

About the Venture

The world's workforce is increasingly exposed. Heat stress already causes an estimated 277,000 injuries and 230 deaths a year in the EU alone, and the world has woken up to silica dust — the UK's Health and Safety Executive links around 500 construction deaths a year to silica-related lung disease, plus a further ~4,000 deaths a year from workplace-induced COPD. Yet this is still managed through "holistic risk assessment" or, at best, static environmental monitors. Today's wearables track heat or dust — never heat, dust and physical strain together.

We are building IndustrialShield: one chest-worn clip carrying three sensors — particulate, gas/heat and physiological strain — worn within 300mm of the breathing zone, designed edge-compute-first so it works where mines have no connectivity, and privacy-first to earn worker trust. It turns continuous exposure into actionable, work-group-level risk profiles, sold as a per-worker subscription (~€8–14/worker/month) on two-year site contracts.

The unfair advantage: our partner's sensor stack — a fanless particulate sensor no rival can match, a gas sensor and an exertion sensor — stacked per worker in a way no other silicon vendor can assemble, plus warm routes into mining operators through our partner's smart-mining network and Founders Factory's own relationships across the sector. Early buyer conversations with major miners have been strongly positive: "I haven't seen it in one unit before."

Our Offer

We don't just fund ideas — we co-build them. Join as Founder & CEO and get access to a full-stack venture studio offering designed to give you the best possible start:

• €275k of spin-out capital plus a founder stipend + studio budget to build, validate, and launch

• Expert Team: Hands-on support across product, growth, fundraising, AI/ML, design, legal, hiring, and more

• MVP Build: Full-time venture builder(s) to help ship your first product

• Accelerator: 6 months of deep operational support post-launch

• Strategic Network: Intros to top-tier investors and corporate partners

• Validation: A vetted concept, domain insight, and a head start in a massive market

Jobs to be Done

As Founder & CEO, you will be responsible for turning a strong thesis into a scaled, defensible business.

• Define the wedge. Decide which mining geography, buyer and procurement channel you attack first — and how construction becomes the scale-out.

• Turn a thesis into a product. Work with our partner's sensor and manufacturing teams to take the three-in-one clip and its dashboard from concept to a device buyers can pilot.

• Win the first customer. Convert warm introductions into a paying pilot with a major mining or industrial operator, and prove continuous group-level exposure profiling in the field.

• Build the commercial model. Land the per-worker subscription motion, and test insurer co-funding and partner-led distribution.

• Ride the regulatory tailwind. Turn tightening dust and heat regulation into procurement urgency without depending on any single mandate.

• Build the company. Hire the initial team, raise capital, and establish the venture as the category leader for wearable industrial safety.

Your Ideal Experience

We are not looking for a traditional safety executive or a pure hardware engineer. The ideal candidate sits at the intersection.

• Founder or senior operator who has built a hardware + software or IoT product from zero to one — ideally in industrial, mining, safety-tech, or occupational-health markets.

• Deep familiarity with at least one buyer segment: mining or heavy-industry health & safety, or enterprise construction.

• Enterprise commercial instinct: you can sell a preventative product to a CFO or H&S director and turn a pilot into a multi-year, per-head contract.

• Strong product and technical instincts: you can reason about sensors, edge compute and device economics even if you are not writing the firmware yourself.

• Comfortable operating in ambiguity: shaping the product, defining the buyer, and making irreversible calls with incomplete data.

• Credibility with conservative industrial buyers and forward-looking venture investors, and willing to be on the ground in the UK or Australia.

Most importantly, you are motivated by category creation — building the workforce-risk operating system for heavy industry, before someone else does.

This is your company. We're here to help.