People at Novela

I started Novela because I'd lived on both sides of the problem — running campaigns in agencies, then teaching marketing at Columbia — and it was obvious that universities were teaching theory while the skill that actually matters, judgement, was being built somewhere else, if at all. Novela is the fix. That practitioner-and-teacher DNA is the whole point, and it's what makes the work here worth doing. We build simulations realistic enough that working marketers respect them and students come out sharper. Every choice a student makes has a real consequence — you can't click your way to a good score — so everyone here has to think about how marketing actually works, not how a textbook says it does. It's a high bar, and a genuinely interesting one to clear. It's also a place where you own real things early. We're small, profitable and founder-led, so there are no committees and no theatre — an idea on Monday can be live by Friday, in front of students at INSEAD, Columbia, Oxford, Imperial and Chicago Booth within weeks. You'll work directly with me and my cofounder, on problems sitting right at the intersection of marketing, education and AI. One note on culture: we trade in friction, not flattery. The product makes students struggle on purpose, and the team holds a high standard and tells each other the truth. If you want more ownership than a bigger company would hand you this early, you care about craft, and you like getting real things done, you'll do well here.

Clark Boyd

Founder