Entrepreneur-in-Residence — UpperClass

The short version

You've founded before, or you're founding now, and you want to get sharper. Spend 12 months inside UpperClass as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, working shoulder to shoulder with the founders on go-to-market and product, and see first-hand how an AI-native unicorn gets built.

You won't watch from the side. You'll sit in the sales calls, ship the features, get on the plane, and own outcomes. No minimum years of experience, no degree requirement. The bar is the one a top accelerator sets for its founders: speed, judgment, and the fire to keep building, whether your last company failed or your current one is just getting started.

• Role: Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR), 1-year programme
• Focus: Go-to-market and product, end to end
• Location: Toronto, New York, South Korea or Manila, with regular travel alongside the founders
• Commitment: Part-time or full-time
• Compensation: Market standard per location
• Reports to: Rodel Sta Ana (Co-Founder & CEO) and Mark Vincent Balneger (Co-Founder & CCO)
• Start: Rolling

About UpperClass

UpperClass is Creator Infrastructure: the platform organisations use to build creator networks from their own communities. Stop renting audiences. Build the creator network you own.

We started where traditional higher education meets the modern creator economy. Universities use UpperClass to turn their students into a media, recruitment and growth channel, while those students build personal brands, portfolios and careers. Higher ed is our beachhead, not our ceiling: the path runs universities → the wider education ecosystem → brands → enterprise.

UpperClass is human-first and AI-native.

Where we are: early, moving fast, and selling. One partner school produced 100 pieces of student content and 100k+ views in its first 90 days. Institutions running the model include Habsida (Seoul), The Food School (Bangkok), New York Audio Institute and BorderPass. We're now launching UpperClass Enterprise.

Who this is for

This is for founders, past or present, who want a year of reps building alongside us. Current founders can join part-time while running their own company. We judge you on what you've built and how you think, not on age, title or CV length.

You probably:

• Have founded something (a startup, a student venture, a side business, an app), whether it failed, stalled or is still running
• Can tell us honestly what worked, what didn't and why, without blaming the market, your co-founder or bad luck
• Have done hard things with no one telling you how: sold to strangers, shipped something, raised money, or kept a team together
• Learn fast and act faster: you'd rather try three things this week than plan one for a month
• Care about education, creators, or both

No experience needed means: no minimum years in a job, no specific industry background, no degree. You don't need to have sold to universities or built a creator programme. We'll teach you the space.

The bar is still high. Think of the standard a top accelerator holds its founders to: a clear sense of what you'd build next, relentless resourcefulness, and evidence you finish what you start. The difference: we open the door to founders the startup world often overlooks, whether their last company failed or their current one is still early.

What you'll do

You'll run the full loop with us: find the customer, sell them, ship what they need, deliver it, and prove the result. Then do it again, faster.

Go-to-market

• Build and work pipeline with universities, education companies and brands across Southeast Asia and beyond
• Join discovery calls, write proposals, handle objections and help close deals
• Run pilots end to end, from kickoff to the 90-day results review
• Test new channels and partner motions: country partners, edtech partnerships, conferences, founder-led content
• Turn every won and lost deal into a sharper pitch

Product

• Talk to schools, students and creators every week and bring back what they actually need
• Write specs, prioritise the backlog with the founders, and ship features with AI-native, no-code and low-code tools
• Own features end to end: onboarding, creator challenges, content approval, results reporting
• Track whether what we ship moves the numbers that clients pay for

On the road with the founders

• Travel with Rodel and Mark to client meetings, university campuses, conferences and investor conversations
• Sit in on how deals get done, how fundraising works, and how partnerships get built in a room
• Represent UpperClass on your own once you've earned it

Your year

Responsibility grows each quarter. By month 12 you should be running a slice of the business on your own.

1. Months 1–3: Learn by shadowing. Join every call and trip. Learn the customer, the product and the pitch. Ship your first small features and own your first pilot alongside a founder.
2. Months 4–6: Own a motion. Take full ownership of one go-to-market motion (a segment, a country or a partner channel) and one product area. You set the targets and report on them weekly.
3. Months 7–9: Lead. Run deals and client relationships solo. Lead a new initiative, such as a market launch, an Enterprise pilot or a new track, from idea to revenue.
4. Months 10–12: Decide what's next. Hand over cleanly, then choose your path: stay on in a leadership role at UpperClass, or go build your next company with a year of reps behind you.

What you get

• See first-hand how to build an AI-native unicorn: every call, every trip, every decision, with the reasoning explained
• Direct access to the founders, our angel investors and the UpperClass ecosystem of universities, edtech partners, creators and operators
• A year of founder-level reps alongside people who've built and sold in this market for a decade
• Real ownership: your name on deals, features and launches, not on slide decks
• A clear exit at month 12: a leadership role at UpperClass if it's a fit, or a strong reference and introductions for whatever you build next
• Compensation: Negotiable, depending on whether you join part-time or full-time

Before you apply

This is an early-stage startup, and we'd rather you hear it from us now.

• It's intense. Hours are irregular, priorities change weekly, and travel can come up at short notice.
• Nothing is handed to you. There's no playbook for most of what you'll do. You'll write it.
• You'll hear no a lot. Selling something new into universities is slow and full of rejection. That's the training.
• We give direct feedback, fast. You'll get it from us and from customers, and we expect the same back.
• It's one year, by design. Treat it as a residency with a beginning and an end, not a job you settle into.

How to apply

Skip the cover letter. Send us these four things:

1. Your founder story: what you built, what worked, what didn't, and what you learned (one page max)
2. Proof of work: a link to something you built or shipped: a product, a site, a deck, a demo, a sales record
3. A 2-minute video: why you want to spend a year building with us, and what you want to build after
4. Your first move: one idea to grow UpperClass in the next 90 days, and how you'd test it in week one

Process: application review → 30-minute call with a founder → a short paid work trial on a real GTM or product problem → final conversation with both founders. We aim to decide within two weeks.