About us
Motives is an AI market researcher. Our AI runs in-depth interviews with real people and then writes up all the results to help companies understand their customers better. Consumer brands spend $100 billion on market research every year and we're building an AI to take over this industry.
Our AI is 10x faster and 10x cheaper than traditional focus groups, without sacrificing quality. We're growing fast and already having a significant impact on this market, with household-name clients including Uber, Diageo, and Anthropic.
We're based in London and have a highly experienced team: our founders come from Google and Palantir and our team includes expert market researchers and top engineers.
We did Y Combinator in 2025, raised a $3 million seed round, and are set for substantial further growth in the rest of 2026. We see this as a uniquely good vertical AI opportunity: a slow-moving, fragmented traditional industry with huge enterprise spending.
The role
We’re looking for someone to come in and own operational work across the business. You’ll be the first hire in this function, so will have full ownership of a number of different functions. We’re hoping you’ll get your hands dirty and do them at first, then build processes for them to help us scale, including defining tasks then handing them off to a contractor, a future hire, or AI.
This is a very high leverage role, where you’ll work across teams and projects to identify and execute on the highest priorities for the business. You’ll work closely day-to-day with our founders, in particular the CEO.
Your job will be a mix of getting things done yourself, enabling/unblocking other teams to get things done, and improving company processes and approaches to make everyone more productive.
The responsibilities
On any given week you may rotate between a variety of different tasks, based on which are the most pressing at the time. We’re looking for someone who’s excited for the idea of diving into whatever is the most important problem at the time.
That said, we have a good idea of what the first 6-12 months will look like, which will include:
Events & Marketing
Sales enablement
Operations
AI Automation
There are a number of places where our team could benefit from a centralized approach to AI tools, so you could own building and improving these tools.
One example of AI automation would be that you could set up AI tools to do any of the above responsibilities more effectively.
Other opportunities include building AI automations for the Sales/Client Management teams, including such features as:
What we’re looking for
We’re flexible on years of experience: we’re open to someone early in their career (in what might be more of a Founder’s Associate role) or someone who has done this before and has more extensive startup or other experience (which might be more of a Head of Operations / Chief of Staff role).
Either way, you should be excited about getting your hands dirty and getting things done - you should be happiest when you’re getting stuck in. But that should be balanced with a desire to improve processes that you’re in charge of, whether that’s by automating them with AI, hiring a contractor, or building a better system to make yourself more efficient.
Other important attributes include:
What we’re offering you
You’ll also get the chance to work directly with the founders of a startup building a truly AI-centric product, being applied to an enormous market. You’ll be working with and reporting to the CEO directly and you’ll collaborate closely to get things done.
We have an experienced team and have learned a lot of lessons through a number of pivots before landing on Motives, so while we’re a fast-paced startup we also aim to have a level-headed and thoughtful approach to our work.
This role also has enormous growth potential. We’re hoping to find someone who will take care of the many operational needs we have today and quickly grow into owning an entire function or functions for the business.
Motives is a team of AI agents that runs qualitative research projects for consumer brands: moderating and analyzing video interviews to help brands understand consumer preferences and test new ideas, in hours instead of weeks.
Salary
$40,000 - $70,000
Location
London, England
Experience
1+ years
Last stage
Pre-seed
Investors
No applications, no recruiter spam. Just the intro.
A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.
I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.
If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.