Hiring Series: Startup Operator

Welcome to a MeritFirst Hiring Series Assessment. Each assessment in the Hiring Series is built to help you show what you do best. Not only are we assessing these for our own hiring needs but partner companies - including 8VC and Slow Ventures portfolio companies, OpenClaw, Eragon, and more -- receive a short list of top performers. No resume required. Double opt-in: we'll confirm with you once more before putting you in touch with a company. This assessment focuses on Strategy and Operations, Chief of Staff, and Growth related roles at startups. Great candidates will be able to prioritize under ambiguity, analyze data, and communicate a clear plan to stakeholders. We'll ask you to introduce yourself, then work through two scenarios: one where you prioritize competing growth initiatives under tight runway pressure, and another where you analyze the results of customer acquisition experiments and propose a next iteration cycle. LLM Usage: We believe that LLMs are an important tool for analytical work. In this context however, we want to understand how you think, write, and work through a problem on your own. For this reason, please avoid using LLMs for writing, data analysis, or generating insights. We expect that this assessment to take 50 minutes. But we'll give you plenty of extra time!