Founding CEO

Founding CEO - Family Management tech startup

A high-trust AI coordination and delegation tool for SEND parents navigating complex, fragmented systems.

Interested but want to know more? Contact recruitment@missionstudio.vc if you would like to view the recording of our webinar on the concept, or if you have any questions.

Ready to apply? Submit your application here before 8pm on Sunday June 7th.

Founding CEO Role overview

Mission Studio is Nesta’s mission-led venture studio, built to turn bold, early-stage ideas into venture-backable, impact-driven companies. Once we have a semi-validated concept with real potential, we partner with an exceptional founder to co-build it with us and lead the business into the future. As a Mission Studio founder, you’ll join us for an intensive, 6-month Build where you will receive a living stipend plus funding to create an MVP and test it with real customers. You’ll work shoulder-to-shoulder with experienced builders, designers, technologists, and founders - and finish with the opportunity to pitch for £200k in pre-seed funding to spin out your venture.

About Kuvo - our latest concept

Kuvo is an AI-powered coordination and delegation platform designed to reduce the unsustainable cognitive and emotional load on families navigating the UK's Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) system. Today, parents of children with SEND are the "single point of failure" in a fragmented landscape of health, education, and social care. They manage a "permanent heaviness" of high-stakes admin, from EHCP applications to complex daily transitions, often with no backup and a system that feels designed to wear them down.

Kuvo’s mission is to externalise the executive function of the family unit. Kuvo isn't just another productivity or household management tool; it is a persistent, proactive intelligence layer that delivers multi-user personalisation. The vision for its core capability is:

1. Inputs: Kuvo ingests the fragmented inputs of family life - emails, school portal messages, photographed letters, voice notes, clinical correspondence, calendar events, and direct parent logging.
2. Interpret: The intelligence layer reads every input against two compounding models simultaneously:
   1. The SEND domain ontology - what does this datapoint mean within the context of the system?
   2. The multi-user family model - what does this datapoint mean for this particular family, and its members, right now?
3. Outputs: Kuvo surfaces an alert, drafts a response, flags a deadline, delegates a task, or routes to a partner - with safe triaging to determine how much human confirmation is required before execution

This capability runs across every domain Kuvo could serve across SEND: day-to-day, healthcare, EHCP / DLA processes, legal support, benefits navigation, transport & logistics, education support, etc.

In its most ambitious form, Kuvo aims to replicate multi-user LLM personalisation across other complex verticals.

For Kuvo, we’re looking for a Founding CEO who has:

• D2C Commercial Instinct: Proven experience growing a consumer product in a high-friction, trust-dependent category. You understand that selling to individuals requires a different acquisition strategy than B2B
• AI Product Proficiency: Ability to hold a technical vision for longitudinal context and agentic delegation without necessarily being an engineer. You can make credible "build vs. buy" decisions and understand the constraints of LLM memory and reasoning.
• User-Centric Product Sensibility: A commitment to building from evidence, treating the "overwhelmed parent" as your north star for all product decisions
• Genuine SEND Conviction: While lived experience is not required, you must have an unambiguous commitment to serve this community as your primary beachhead
• Test & learn mindset: thrives in fast-paced, uncertain environments: rapidly testing assumptions and pivoting as required
• Scrappiness and resourcefulness: takes initiative and is proactively able to get things done with low resources when needed
• Inspirational leadership: exceptional at rallying teams to achieve shared goals in an inclusive environment
• Skilled storytelling: effective at communicating with diverse audiences and stakeholders

At Mission Studio, we work with talented people who want to build ambitious, impactful ventures. You don’t need prior founder experience - just relevant skills, domain insight, and the drive to build a business in this space. If you care deeply about the problem and have the grit to bring a venture to life, we want to hear from you.

The founder package we offer

• A venture hypothesis, made up of a clear problem to solve and semi-validated concept idea. By "semi-validated", we mean early stage identification of first customers, signals of willingness to pay and other business model assumptions, to be further validated in Build
• A living stipend of ~£4k per month for up to 6 months whilst you build with us
• £25k of additional funds to support the build and launch of the company
• Dedicated, hands-on operational support from a passionate team specialising in venture design and building, product development, fundraising, tech, and strategic partnerships
• Access to Nesta’s mission-relevant internal and external networks
• The opportunity at the end of 6 months to pitch for an additional £200K investment and establish the venture as an independent company - and receive a majority equity stake in the new company

How we build with founders

During the 6 month build, Mission Studio deploys a lean venture building approach - focused on fast, disciplined experimentation and learning. Every effort is purposeful, aimed at validating assumptions within the venture hypothesis and uncovering signals of scalable growth.

The studio and founders work together in a repeat rhythm of test and learn sprints, all supported by a clear lean venture building methodology, practical tools and a smooth operational backbone that gives every concept the best chance of success.

Making an application 

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 8pm on Sunday June 7th.

Introductory calls will be held on a rolling basis, and Round 1 interviews will likely take place from w/c June 15th.

We want our startups to represent the diversity of the people and communities they serve. This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful. See our EDI commitments for more information.

Kuvo is part of Mission Studio

Mission Studio is dedicated to creating, launching and scaling startups that address some of the UK’s biggest social challenges. From achieving net zero to tackling obesity to striving for equal outcomes for children born into disadvantage, we’re not just building great businesses, we’re designing impactful solutions for a better future. 

Backed by a world-class venture design and building process, dedicated capital, experienced operators providing hands-on support, as well as Nesta’s ecosystem of experts, research and partnerships, we partner with founders to build incredible companies. 

Mission Studio is led by Kenny Ewan (ex-Founder of Wefarm, the world's largest farming network, reaching 5 million users and raising over $35mn in VC investment). Kenny and the wider team bring decades of startup experience to support you on your journey, doing whatever it takes to help you and your venture succeed.