Founding Marketplace GM

Pathfinder is building the financial rails for $1.5T of US education funds, a consumer card, powered by an AI eligibility model, that gives parents instant access to their education dollars (think "HSA card, but for education") while giving states automated AI fraud detection. As $900B of public education budget is put back in parents' hands and families sit on $600B in 529s with no good infrastructure to use it, Pathfinder unblocks the money.

The long-term vision is a three-step build: unblock choice funding to become the go-to place for families to navigate options to create more supply of educational options. The end goal is nothing less than a new education system. The team is the standout selling point, an unusual barbell where most are ex-founders and almost everyone has either run a school or run risk at a major fintech. Amaan (dropped out at 14; at 19 built the computer-vision system for the world's largest smart-warehousing company) and Sid (former homeschooler, 4th in the International Cyber Olympiad at 11, ex-Goldman quant) run the company; the team includes a founding engineer from MILA and Elon's SpaceX school, a Head of Risk who led risk at Mercury/Stripe/Circle, payments engineers from Microsoft and Goldman, Arizona's former ESA Deputy Director, and a GTM lead who co-founded Egypt's fintech superapp Khazna.

Pathfinder is in-person in San Francisco, flat, super-IC, and building "a bit of a cult" around genuine belief in the mission.

This is the Founding GM for Pathfinder's marketplace, and the founders are clear that the marketplace is the actual core business; the card is just the wedge they're willing to break even on to drive marketplace revenue (Visa pays ~2% of every card transaction today). It's a greenfield 0-to-1 role: comfortable in a P&L, strong intuition for the cold-start problem and SMB distribution, building vendor relationships from small local education providers all the way up to Amazon, Walmart, and Target.

Think Uber GMs dropping into new cities to build them up. Day to day spans a product/ops mix, how to position things in the app so parents actually purchase, and how to structure take-rate/commission with vendors to start adding that revenue. This role is intense, high energy, burning the evening candlelight, and needs an intense, confident, charismatic personality comfortable talking with vendors. And, they get on the plane.