CTO Co-founder

Job ad: CTO / Technical Co-Founder
Company: Trend.ai
Location: London (flexible/hybrid)
Equity Structure: Co-founder level (meaningful equity, long-term ownership) Time Required: Full-time (initial flexibility possible during transition)

About the Project

Trend.AI is a decision intelligence system designed to align small and medium businesses with real- time market conditions.

Most businesses don’t fail due to lack of data - they fail because they cannot translate constant external change into clear decisions.

We are building a system that ingests external signals (market activity, consumer behaviour, technology shifts, macro trends) and converts them into relevant, actionable direction. This is not a dashboard or reporting tool.

It is an intelligence layer that answers: what should this business be doing right now?

Where We Are

• Strong founder-market fit (SME background, direct exposure to the problem)
• Concept validated through research across SMEs and existing market intelligence tools
• Clear product vision and system direction defined
• Pre-build stage - no legacy constraints, ready to architect from first principles
The Next Phase
• Design and build the first working system (MVP)
• Develop multi-source data ingestion (structured + unstructured)
• Build signal detection and filtering mechanisms
• Create a reasoning layer to translate signals into decisions
• Establish a scalable, modular architecture that improves over time

Who We Are Looking For

• Exceptional technical ability - you operate at a high level as an engineer and problem solver
• Strong systems thinker - you design architecture, not just write code
• Experience building and shipping products (ideally from 0 → 1)
• Background in AI, computer science, mathematics, or a similarly rigorous field

You might have:

• Studied at a top university (e.g. Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, UCL, etc.)
• Or built equivalent capability through real-world experience

More importantly, you:

• Think in systems, not features
• Are comfortable working from first principles in ambiguity
• Care about building something technically meaningful, not just functional
• Are curious about how real-world decisions are made and how to improve them

This role is designed for someone who wants to apply deep technical thinking to a complex, real-world problem - not just build another product.

This is not a typical CTO role. It is a co-founder opportunity to build a new category of product at the intersection of AI, data, and real-world decision-making.

If this direction resonates, reach out with a brief note on your background and the kinds of systems you like building.