Kautilya · Mumbai

Founder's Office

WHO WE ARE

Kautilya is a buy-side M&A advisory firm. Pocket Fund is a micro private equity firm. Together, we buy, advise on, and operate off-market, lower middle-market deals across US, UK, ANZ and India.

Our work lives in the gap between great companies and the capital that wants to buy them. That means our problems don't fit into neat departments. On any given week we're sourcing off-market deals, building intelligence dossiers, negotiating with founders, fixing a portfolio company's churn problem, shipping internal tools, and writing content that brings the next deal in the door.

Kautilya is the formal end of what we do. It's the brand our clients sign engagement letters with, the entity that runs sell-side and buy-side mandates, and the front line for institutional counterparties. The Founder's Office sits at the centre of that.

THE ROLE

Founder's Office roles get pitched as "learn everything, own nothing." That is not this.

You'll start on special projects: the things Dev is personally holding.

The special-projects phase is the audition. It's how you build the context and the trust that unlocks the second phase, where you take permanent ownership. That slice depends on what you're good at and what we need most when you're ready. It could be:

Running a specific project end to end
Owning a client relationship or a geography
Building and running an internal function (ops, finance, a new team)
Launching a new product or service line under Kautilya

You won't know exactly what you'll own six months in. Neither do we. If you need to know before you start, this isn't for you.

The special-projects phase typically lasts 3 to 6 months. It ends when you can walk into a room, get context on a live problem in 15 minutes, and leave with an owner (usually you) and a deadline. There's no promotion cycle, no title change to campaign for, no ladder. The scope you own grows in proportion to the scope you can be trusted with. That's the entire mechanic.

WHAT YOU'LL ACTUALLY DO (FIRST 6 MONTHS)

Any given week will look different, but expect a mix of:

Founder leverage. Anything Dev is spending time on that shouldn't require him. Preparing decks, profilings, prep docs, and briefs for meetings he's about to walk into. Managing high-priority inboxes. Running the point on things too small to hire for but too important to drop.

Internal ops and systems. Fixing the broken thing before it breaks something bigger. Standing up a process, a template, a tracker, a workflow. Turning a one-off into a system. If a task shows up on your plate three times, you own building the version that removes it.

The undefined. The reason Founder's Office exists in the first place. Things that don't have a home yet. You're the home.

WHAT COMES AFTER

Sometime between month 3 and month 6, you and Dev will have a conversation about what you own permanently. It'll be based on:

What you've shown you're good at during special projects
What's genuinely missing at Kautilya at that moment
What compounds most for both of us over the next 2 years

There's no promise of a specific outcome. The promise is that the conversation happens, honestly, and that the slice you take is real ownership, not a rebrand of the same firefighting.

If you're still on pure special projects at month 9, one of us has made a mistake and we should both name it.

ARE YOU THE PERSON FOR THIS?

Ask yourself:

Are you comfortable with a job description that will change three times in six months? (High tolerance for ambiguity is the entry ticket, not a bonus.)
Can you produce founder-quality work on a founder-quality deadline without being managed? (The whole role is leverage. If we have to check your work, we've lost leverage.)
Can you write clearly, quickly, and in a professional register? (Client emails, internal briefs, all in the same day.)
Are you good at holding many small threads without dropping any? (Not the same as being organised. Better than that.)
Do you get sharper or duller when the stakes go up? (We're not looking for calm. We're looking for people who compound under pressure.)
Can you say "I don't know" and then go find out fast? (Fake confidence gets caught by counterparties in one call.)
Are you genuinely curious about M&A, investing, business, and how deals actually get done? (You'll be inside them.)
Do you take feedback like a professional, not like someone building an identity around being right? (We give it fast and direct.)

Good to have

Have you done any of these? (Not required. Helpful.) Prior founder's office / chief of staff / EA-to-founder work. Investment banking, PE, consulting, or Big 4 M&A. Running your own thing (even a small one). Legal or accounting basics. Excel that isn't embarrassing.

We value demonstrated ability and initiative over a checklist of qualifications.

WHAT YOU'LL GAIN

A front-row seat. You'll see how deals actually get sourced, structured, negotiated, and closed at a firm that runs them across four geographies.

Range. Legal, financial, operational, strategic, communication. You'll touch all of them.

A network. Founders, investors, operators, lawyers, bankers, and deal-makers across three continents. Relationships built by working on something with someone, which is the only kind that lasts.

Compound skills. Judgment, taste, written communication, negotiation, and the ability to hold a lot in your head at once. Useful whether you stay with us, start a company, or buy one.

A real seat. If you earn it. That's the entire pitch.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

If we're both doing this right, what does 12 months from now look like to you?

In our head, some version of:

A well-defined slice of Kautilya you own, that we trust you to run without escalation.
A record of shipped special-projects work that saved Dev meaningful better.
Relationships with our clients, counterparties, and team that outlast the role itself.
A visible increase in the throughput and quality of the firm because you're in it.

Tell us your version in your application.

1. Your details2. Questions & assignment

Your details

Full name *

Email *

Phone *

Age *

LinkedIn profile URL *

Resume *PDF or DOC, up to 25 MB.

Where did you hear about this role? *

A few more questions

Define "founder-quality." In two or three sentences, what does "founder-quality work" mean to you? Give one specific example of something you've produced that met that bar, and one that didn't. *

The Monday morning. It's your first Monday. Dev sends you three things in a row before 9am: (a) a client CEO wants a call today to talk through a diligence concern on a live deal (b) a founder we've been chasing for 4 months just replied and needs a response by tonight (c) an analyst on the team is stuck on a valuation model and asked for help You have one working day. Walk us through how you triage, in what order, and what you'd say to whom. There are no wrong answers, only revealing ones. *

The slice. Fast-forward six months. You're taking permanent ownership of one slice of Kautilya. What slice do you pitch for, and why that one? (This is a real answer, not a test. If you can't imagine a specific slice yet, tell us what's stopping you and what you'd need to see first.) *

The proof. Show us the closest thing you've done to this role: a project you ran end to end, a memo or deliverable you're proud of, a time you were the person a founder or executive leaned on. Recent and specific beats old and polished. If your closest proof isn't recent enough, do a small version this week and submit that. *You may add links

The client email. A client has been ghosting Kautilya for 11 days on a live mandate. Their last message said "let me check internally and revert by Tuesday." It's now the following Monday. Write the exact email you'd send. Under 120 words. We're reading for tone, restraint, and whether you sound like a professional or a template. *

The wrong call. Describe a time you were confidently wrong about something that mattered at work or in a project. How did you find out, what did it cost, and what did you change afterward? We're not grading the mistake. *

The disagreement. Tell us about a time you disagreed with someone more senior than you and had to hold the position. What did you do, how did it end, and would you handle it the same way now? "I was wrong and backed down" is an acceptable ending. "I avoided the conversation" is the only failing one. *

The bad news. You spot a material issue in a diligence workstream 48 hours before a client presentation. Nobody else has caught it. If you flag it, the deal likely slips or dies. If you don't, we present, and it surfaces later. Write the exact Slack message you send Dev the moment you spot it. *

The feedback that stung. What's the most useful negative feedback you've ever received? Why did it sting, and what's different about you now because of it? "Nothing comes to mind" is only acceptable if you can honestly tell us what you think that means. *

The Assignment

Read the full brief

Task 1: The one-page memo

Pick any one of these:

Option A: A sector we should look at. Write a one-page memo on a specific sector (globally or in one of our geographies) that you think Kautilya should be paying more attention to. Not the whole industry, one specific pocket. Include: what it is, why it's interesting for lower-middle-market M&A specifically, what the risks are, and one concrete next step you'd take next Monday if we agreed.

Option B: An internal process we should build. Pick any one recurring pain in a small buy-side advisory firm (client updates, target list hygiene, follow-up discipline, diligence handoff, whatever). Write a one-page memo proposing exactly how you'd fix it in the first 30 days. Include what you'd build, what you'd measure, and what you'd deliberately not do yet.

Option C: A live target. Find one real, specific business (real name, real URL, real founder) that you think would be an interesting acquisition candidate for a lower-middle-market buyer somewhere in our geographies. Write a one-page memo: what they do, why they're interesting, why they might sell, and how you'd open the conversation.

Whichever you pick, format matters. A messy one-pager is a bigger red flag here than a mediocre idea.

Task 2: The prep doc

Assume Dev has a call tomorrow at 4pm with someone whose LinkedIn profile you've never seen before. You have 45 minutes to prep him.

Pick a real person (a founder, an investor, a public-facing operator, anyone real). Produce the prep doc you'd hand Dev before the call. There is no template. Length, structure, and focus are your call. This tests taste more than it tests research.

Include the person's name and LinkedIn link at the top. Include your time-spent at the bottom, honestly.

Task 3: The three questions

Send us three questions you'd want answered before your first day if we offered you this role. Not FAQ questions. The questions that would actually change how you show up.

For any queries - gbanerjee.pocketfund@gmail.com

Task 1: The one-page memo *

Task 2: The prep doc *

Task 3: The three questions *

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