Hey! We're Alex and Leon.
We founded Whitespace earlier this year to bring the power of AI to more people and businesses. We're building AI agents for wholesale distributors of critical physical goods, from food items to industrial parts. Both our families ran wholesale businesses. Fewer than 0.1% of these businesses are using AI the way tech companies do. We're helping them unlock the potential of their businesses with our product, and in turn making supply chains run 10x more efficiently.
About us
We're still very early in our journey. The single most important question we ask all our friends when considering an early-stage startup is: would you want to work with the founders?
To that end, here's a bit more about us.
Hi, I'm Alex! Before Whitespace, I worked at BCG and was the first non-engineer hire at Ankar (an Index-backed startup), where I scaled the company to 7-figure ARR in a year. I studied Economics at Cambridge, though I spent most of my time starting projects and running societies. I recharge by playing sports and beating Leon in board games (have done this for 12 years now since high school). I think the best thing to do in the world is to give your all to something alongside people you like and admire. That's Whitespace for me.
Hey, I'm Leon, the performative CTO at Whitespace. Before this, I founded an ed-tech startup, did freelance design, and published robotics papers in tier-one journals. I tend to take my hobbies too seriously. I've played an unhealthy amount of chess and taken way too many dodgy falls while outdoor climbing. Whitespace has become the place where all my weirdness and spikiness come together. We pour 120% of ourselves into our work, and the smiles we put on our customers' faces have made this the most rewarding thing I've done in my career.
Here are the four operating principles that guide how we work, with both our takes on each.
Realize our potential
AlexWhen we first started Whitespace, we did an 8-hour Zoom session to align on our motivation and fit. It turns out one of the reasons that we both wanted to found Whitespace is that we see it as our way to realize our potential and exert our impact in the world.
Because of that, you will see how that motivation underpins how we work every day. We always give our all, trust each other, reflect deeply and push ourselves out of our comfort zone so we can grow and become the best version of ourselves.
LeonI believe there are a few ingredients to realizing our potential:
- work on something challenging and ambitious
- the work has a counterfactual impact on the world
- you are constantly on high growth and learning trajectories
- high ownership of your work, with high trust from the team
Before Whitespace, nothing met these criteria, and I always felt I was working at 30 to 50% capacity. At Whitespace I feel 120% every day and I want everyone who works here to feel that way.
Serve our customers
AlexThe thing that we're most proud of since founding Whitespace is that we're making our customers' lives better. They're saving time, making better decisions, and doing work that was not possible before.
You also end up building a relationship with the customers that brings a deep sense of fulfillment. One of our customers, Eric, appreciates us so much that he regularly sends us new customers to support us.
We know that good things will happen if we continue to serve our customers every single day.
LeonUltimately, Whitespace's goal is to help each of our customers make their business better and make each user's day more delightful. We ship two things that people love: world-class software and world-class customer service.
There are few instances in our customers' careers when an outside third party sits down with them to help them make their business better. Customer obsession is not common among wholesalers. It's what separates us from incumbents and competitors. The second part alone, done at scale, will create billions of dollars of value in the economy.
Own our work
AlexWe care deeply about our work and our craft. We own our work to the highest standards and deliver for our customers.
This sort of ownership doesn't mean working non-stop and chasing artificial deadlines. It's closer to an obsession about your product and your customers that makes you do your best work. The most magical moments in my career have all come when I'm working with a group of people who care as much as I do.
LeonIn the traditional sense of the word craft, Whitespace builds products with high taste and craft.
But interestingly, I've found that there's also a craft when it comes to working fast, and a "taste" for what's important to work on.
Care for each other
AlexWe work hard at Whitespace. We believe that's how we best realize our potential and serve our customers.
We also care for each other and want all of us to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. We believe this is what ultimately enables long-term success. In a world where job-hopping every two years is normalized, we want everyone to see Whitespace as the place they would least want to leave.
LeonWe've gone through many ups and downs, and what takes us out of the downs is always very simple: empathy and care for each other, and the understanding that everyone's human and will make mistakes.
We also offer reverse reference checks as part of the process. You can speak to people we've worked with to learn more about us.
Anyways, now let's get into the role!
About Whitespace
Our mission is to make supply chains 10x more efficient. This means critical infrastructure like data centers can be built faster, and everyday essentials can become more affordable.
We've raised $2M from Y Combinator, Robinhood Ventures, Sentinel Global, and Inkberry to achieve this mission. Since launching this June, we're already working with 10 customers, built a loved product, and are on track to reach $1M ARR by the end of the year.
We're starting by helping wholesale distributors, critical intermediaries of supply chains, become more effective. Today, we're building specialized agents that solve three burning pains for them:
- Managing multi-million-dollar warehouses. Wholesalers have been managing inventory on spreadsheets for years, with a human buyer going through thousands of items one by one to decide how much to stock. Our inventory planning agents automate this for our customers and significantly reduce stock-outs and overstock.
- Communication with external stakeholders. Wholesalers are unique nodes that sit between suppliers and buyers of physical goods. This means that they are constantly communicating with both sides. Our email agents work 24/7 in the background, retrieving data, relaying information, and resolving issues upstream and downstream.
- Making better business decisions. Wholesalers often have poor visibility into their businesses because of poor software. They run on legacy ERP software built decades ago, which means it takes them hours to run the right analysis for their business. With our agents, they can analyze data to inform decisions 10x more efficiently.
"It's like a fresh wind in my day. Some of the things that I've been dreading, I'm like, oh wait, I have Whitespace."Director at an industrial distributor
Who we're looking for
We are looking for a founding engineer to help us scale from 10 to 100+ customers. This means:
- You have shipped production software before (it's a plus if you've built agent harnesses), and
- You are exceptional at using coding agents (rule of thumb: you're at least 10x more productive than 12 months ago).
You'll also be aligned with our four operating principles above. For this role, this means:
- You are obsessed with building products that people love.
- You are high agency. You don't need to wait to be told what to build, and can learn new things, talk to customers, and iterate your way to solutions.
- You want to wear multiple hats. On a given day, you might be talking to customers, designing UI/UX, and building state-of-the-art memory harnesses.
- You thrive in the chaos. You can handle multiple P0s and navigate complexity without compromising on the quality of your work.
- You have a bias towards action. You want to make a call when it's ambiguous, make progress, then reflect, iterate, and repeat.
What you'll be doing
Building world-class software
We are rebuilding the software infrastructure of the supply chain. You will hold the line between AI slop and a well-crafted, thoughtfully designed product that is a joy to use. On a daily basis, this looks like:
- Talking to users and iterating with them to discover their pain points and friction when using the software
- Prototyping UI/UX constantly on new ideas and form factors. You should have a strong intuition for what's intuitive to use.
- Building evals to improve agent performance
Working closely with customers
You will own relationships with customers as you iterate our product. For many of these customers, you will be the face of Whitespace for them. On a daily basis, this looks like:
- Building relationships with customers. You're the technical advisor on their journey to AI adoption. You'll understand what they want to achieve with their business, and help them achieve that through Whitespace.
- Iterating the product with users. You'll ship fast and iterate new features with our users. This means gathering constant feedback and working through signals (often noisy) to internalize what it means for the product.
- Solving technical issues for customers. You are the first line of support. You should be super responsive at addressing their issues. Our customers rely on our software working.
Solving hard technical problems
You will solve technical problems that are largely unsolved by anyone in the world. Some of the ones we are working on today:
- Optimizing warehouse inventory. This is a multi-reward objective with tons of edge cases and nuances that traditional ML algorithms can't handle.
- Connecting with legacy systems at scale. We've been doing this by building agents to integrate seamlessly with ERP, CRM, WMS, and an assortment of legacy software. What used to take 2 months can now take 2 hours.
- Building a system to capture tribal knowledge. It's very hard to capture knowledge that's been scattered across places and living in operators' heads for 20+ years.
And most importantly, you'll be building the company with us. There's still a lot that we haven't figured out, like how to scale our product to serve the next 100+ customers, how to sell our product at scale, and how to create a strong company culture. As the first hire of the company, you'll play a huge role in the company for many years to come.
What you might want to know
- Location. London, UK. We mostly work in person. We trust each other to be responsible with where to work in order to maximize your productivity and the team's productivity. We do 4 to 5 days a week in person most weeks.
- Process. 30-minute intro chat, 1-hour technical interview, and a paid work-together day. We understand working together for a full day is a large commitment, but it's the highest signal thing that we can do and you can do to see if you'd like to work with us.
- Other things to read. What is a wholesale distributor? and what our customers say about us.
Apply by emailing founders@whitespacehq.ai using subject "Founding Engineer" and content:
- 2-3 sentences of what makes you interested in Whitespace
- 2-3 sentences of the thing you're most proud of
- CV