I don't need a right hand they said…

I am looking for a young ambitious business generalist to join me as my right hand and help me grow Root into the European market leader. You will work on evolving our product into an AI-first emission reduction engine, as well as winning some of the largest Food & Beverages companies in Europe as our customers.

With a growing team and customers waiting to deploy climate budgets into the most impactful supply chain projects, the timing could not be more urgent. We are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change and the last one that can do something about it.

What you will work on

The role “Founder Associate” has become the go-to role for young ambitious business graduates. I have seen more variations of this role than Ghibli-style portraits. Most of them focus on taking low-stakes, repetitive tasks off the founder’s plate. This is not what I am looking for. These tasks I can increasingly delegate to a set of AI tools today.

You will focus on two things:

Lead key initiatives: There are always more important projects than I can personally do. At any point in time, I typically focus on two. That’s my capacity. If a project isn’t “top two”, I either delegate it to a team or park it. If I decide to park it it is because I believe having someone else work on it would take considerably longer and lead to a worse outcome due to missing context. This is where you come in. I want to go from 2 high-leverage projects to 3 or 4 - because over time you should be able to match my context and decision-making abilities like none other in the company.

Act as my sparring partner: My cofounder Mo and our functional leads are great sparring partners. But they have their own projects to run. I want someone who gets close enough to my day-to-day to internalize our context — the user problems, our principles, the edge cases — and help make my decisions better. Sometimes you’ll sub in for me. Sometimes you’ll call out blind spots. Either way, you’ll be part of the process.

Here are 3 projects I would hand you on Day One:

1. Replace our self-service analytics with an AI assistant that answers any data question for users via simple prompts.

2. Stress-test and improve our recently released “Farm Action Plans” — a recommendation engine for reducing farm-level CO₂ footprints.

3. Build and iterate on the sales material and product demo for our upcoming product launch in June.

How we will work together

For the first 6 months, our working model is simple:

• We have a shared list of outcomes we want to achieve this week.

• We check in daily to review progress, unblock issues, and prioritize.

• You join most of my meetings and calls to build context fast.

• You get access to my email inbox, LinkedIn, Aircall, etc.

• You get frequent adhoc feedback, plus a structured 1:1 each month.

In order for this to work I need you to be candid with me at all times, show strong commitment and work ethic, be reliable, and not get frustrated by setbacks. You will also need to disagree and commit - as long as you don’t feel our values are misaligned.

While not exactly the same setup, Marvin is a good example of how this can be an extremely fruitful experience for both. He joined Root as our first product hire — no PM experience, just talent, role model attitude and curiosity. He worked closely with me for a year, built deep user insight, and today leads our biggest product squad. Today, he has his own “right hand” that is absolutely smashing it.

How to get the position

This role is influenced by how people like Keith Rabois and Bryan Chesky think about early hires: Look for young, hyper ambitious generalists with a “thick skin” that are able to learn faster than the rest. These smart generalists can become an expert in a new area in just 90 days or so.

When I interview, I use one of two scorecards: “senior” or “junior”.

While senior candidates are expected to have already delivered big outcomes in the past, junior candidates don’t need that track record. Instead, in the case of this role I look for two things: willingness and ability to learn. I tend to look for candidates that put themselves in situations that would allow them to fail and learn more frequently than the rest. For example: When Karim joined us he had already started a profitable e-commerce business. He was able to tell me more about inventory mgmt. and SEO optimisation than any “expert” I know. During his internship Jannik built most of our back-office tools and handled all our partner APIs - with zero prior experience. Now both are core to the team.

Spend 2–3 years in this role and you will compress a decade of learning into a few intense cycles. When you move on — inside Root or out — you will compete with candidates with 5–10 years more experience on paper; and likely get the job.

This role is not listed on our careers page. If you get that feeling of excitement in your tummy, just drop me a quick note at eric@rootglobal.io

PS: We are hiring for many more roles at Root Global - check out our open positions here.