Entrepreneur-in-Residence — UpperClass

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

You've founded before, or you're founding now, and you want to get sharper. Spend 12 months inside Upper Class 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.

• 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
• Reports to: Rodel Sta Ana (Co-Founder & CEO) and Mark Vincent Balneger (Co-Founder & CCO)
• Start: Rolling

Upper Class 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 Upper Class 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.

Upper Class 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 Border Pass. We're now launching Upper Class Enterprise.

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.

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
• Te…