Founder & CEO - Industrial Shield
Founder & CEO - Industrial Shield
One clip, three sensors, real-time protection for the people who work in the world's toughest environments
Location: UK or Australia
Start date: ASAP
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.
