Operator-In-Residence (OIR): Semiconductors

About the Company

Primary is the largest early-stage venture firm in the world, with $1B in assets under management, investing in pre-seed and seed-stage startups based in New York City. The firm’s Incubation arm, Primary Labs, launched in 2019 to support the ideation, research and launch of new startups. Primary’s first three incubated companies will return its first fund many times over, and Primary is now primed for substantial growth in its Incubation efforts. Check out our blog post, “What Invention and Incubation have in Common” to learn more about Primary’s incubation philosophy.

About the Role

Primary Labs is looking for an Operator-In-Residence (OIR) to join its Incubation program with a focus on opportunities within the semiconductor industry. This role is open to remote candidates.

We’re amidst the biggest infrastructure build out in decades. There is $1T+ of cap-ex going into building out AI infrastructure over the next decade, with much of that spend going into compute. With complexity, scale, and demand rising, we believe the semiconductor industry needs new innovation, across software and hardware. As a result, we believe there is a unique opportunity for new entrants to start generational companies in the semiconductor industry. We’ve built a deep network of experts to support us in this journey. We believe incubation is the next step to double down in this category.

We at Primary have a concerted focus to invest in and incubate businesses across the semis and data center value chain, a recent example being Etched, the world’s first transformer ASIC. Etched is disrupting the GPU market with a product purpose built for transformer inference, enabling use cases we never could have imagined like real-time video games. The company recently raised a $120M Series A, with features in TechCrunch and Crunchbase.

We’re hiring an Operator in Residence (OIR) to explore and incubate new ventures in the semiconductor space, with a dual-pronged approach across academic commercialization and industry opportunity mapping.

As an OIR, you will work across two core vectors:

1. Academic Commercialization
   You’ll engage deeply with researchers working on cutting-edge innovations in semiconductors, networking, memory, and power/cooling. Your mission will be to uncover and evaluate promising technologies coming out of academia and explore paths to commercialize them—through partnership, licensing, or incubation. You should be technically fluent enough to “talk the talk” with academics and industry experts, and comfortable translating complex technical ideas into business opportunities.

2. Industry-Driven Opportunity Discovery
   You’ll also dive into the commercial semiconductor landscape—including EDA tools, data center software, and emerging infrastructure needs—to identify white space opportunities. This means conducting deep customer discovery, developing insight into industry pain points, and working closely with our investment team to validate and shape potential 0-to-1 companies.

The right person for this role is someone who has experience performing research and analysis on the semiconductor, networking, memory and power/cooling industry more broadly, in order to gain a full understanding of the landscape. Ideally this person is commercially minded and already has a depth of knowledge on incumbents and newer entrants to the space. They should be excited about building a business from the ground up (0 to 1) and have a passion for researching and identifying new opportunities within this evolving space. They should feel comfortable talking to technical operators in the semiconductor industry, but they themselves do not need to be technical. Above all, they must believe that there is a unique opportunity to build a multi-billion-dollar business in the semiconductor space.

What You'll Do

• Support Primary’s idea generation and vetting process

• Connect with academics and researchers and top institutions and learn about their work in order to explore opportunities for commercialization

• Conduct intensive market analysis, competitive landscaping and customer research

• Develop business models, product roadmaps, and go-to-market strategies for the most promising startup ideas

• Create pitch decks and other investor materials

• Join the company in its launch phase as a founding team member responsible for gaining initial traction, building out the rest of the team, and supporting business operations or go back to the drawing board with the Incubation program all over again

• Support Primary’s executive recruiters in identifying and closing your Co-Founders

About You

• Self-starter: you have an entrepreneur’s intrinsic motivation, capable of independently running with business ideas with substantial ambiguity

• Network-builder: you’re comfortable developing relationships with industry leaders from the ground up

• Entrepreneurial: you are eager to engage in the venture and startup ecosystem and have your finger on the pulse when it comes to new deals and emerging business models in the semiconductor landscape

• Storyteller: you’re able to learn rapidly, develop a strong point of view, and communicate compelling narratives

• Commercially-minded: you are comfortable with financial models and concepts and can quickly assess the feasibility and scalability of a new venture idea

• 4+ years of experience in the semiconductor space, or doing research/analysis on the category, with technical acumen

• Masters or PHD not required but a plus