Founder-in-Residence, AI Native Ventures (LG NOVA)

About the Program

LG NOVA, the North America Innovation Center of LG Electronics, builds new ventures and spins them out as real businesses. This is a founding seat, not an advisory one. If the venture proves out, you lead it as Founder and CEO. The mandate is open on purpose—we are domain agnostic by design, focused on AI-enabled software ventures with strong commercial potential. Bring the problem you have unfair insight into, the buyers you already know, and the conviction that it should exist as a company. Every venture in this cohort is AI-native. We are building software solutions only—no hardware, no robotics, and nothing capital intensive upfront. For this cohort we are not considering health or clean tech.

Who We Are Looking For

• Founder, repeat founder, or founding executive experience
• Deep expertise and credibility in a specific industry or problem space
• A live network of buyers and decision makers in your domain that you can leverage
• A track record of building, commercializing, or scaling something new
• Comfort in ambiguity with a bias toward evidence and revenue
• A clear view on why AI makes your venture buildable now and not three years ago

What LG NOVA Offers

• A concept testing budget so you can put real money behind proving demand
• A de-risking idea to commercialization budget up to $500K, setting you up for Seed round
• Government partnerships in multiple U.S. States that open real doors to pilots, design partners, and first customers
• An LG backed fund that gives validated ventures a direct path to capital, so you are not starting your raise from zero
• Market research, market sizing, and financial modeling done alongside you, not billed back to you
• Engineering services to help you test and build
• A competitive stipend at market rates while you do the work
• Equity in the venture you just validated and commercialized if it progresses to the Seed round

How The Program Runs

The program runs in two sprints. Sprint 1 is 90 days of validation. You define a specific high value problem, identify the economic buyer, test willingness to pay, and generate hard evidence that a venture should exist. The point is proof, not a product. Sprint 2 is 180+ days of building toward venture formation. You move from evidence to commercialization, early customers, and the foundation of a company. If the venture earns it, you become Founder and CEO of a new business built with LG behind you.

What You Will Do

• Develop and sharpen a venture thesis
• Run buyer discovery with the people who actually hold the budget
• Pin down the economic buyer, the budget owner, and how they buy
• Validate the pain, the workflow, and the real size of the demand
• Design and test a paid pilot, a design partner program, or an early offering
• Secure concrete evidence of willingness to pay, whether a paid pilot, a signed letter of intent with commercial terms, or a design partner agreement, from a named buyer
• Build the commercialization plan and the business model
• Bring back a recommendation grounded in what the market told you

What Success Looks Like By The End

• A clearly defined venture opportunity
• A validated customer and economic buyer
• Hard evidence of demand
• A credible path to revenue
• Signed design partners, pilots, or customer commitments
• A commercialization plan that scales
• Enough conviction that LG should invest and build

The Details

This is a hybrid role based in Santa Clara, California. The Founder In Residence Program is designed as two consecutive sprints. We are selecting a very small, highly selective founding cohort for this round, so the bar is high and the opportunity is significant.

Pay

• Sprint 1 (90 days): Annualized compensation equivalent of $180,000–$200,000, plus a dedicated concept testing budget
• Sprint 2 (90 days): Annualized compensation equivalent of $200,000–$240,000, contingent upon successful completion of Sprint 1 and selection to continue into the commercialization phase
• If your venture is successfully spun out and you transition into the role of Founder & CEO, your executive compensation package—including salary, equity, and other compensation elements—will be negotiated separately as part of the new company's formation and financing

How To Apply

Send us your resume and a short founder summary, about one page, answering the three questions below in a few sentences each:

• What experience have you had building? Pick one venture, product, or business you personally helped build or commercialize. What was the problem, what did you own, and what were the measurable results such as revenue, customers, funding, or adoption?
• What traction did you have? Tell us about a time you found a real customer need, proved demand, and won early customers. What did you do, and what happened?
• How do you move? Give us one example of using your network to accelerate something—a key hire, a partnership, a customer relationship, or an industry connection that changed the outcome.