CEO

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) — Deep-Tech Authentication & Trust Infrastructure

Company: Provenia, Inc.
Location: Remote — United States
Employment: Full-Time
Stage: Pre-Seed | Pre-Revenue | Pre-Prototype

About Provenia

Provenia, Inc. is a founder-led, Delaware-incorporated technology company developing a new foundation for trust, identity, and authentication of physical assets.

Our proprietary, patent-pending PASSKey platform combines hardware-rooted cryptographic identity, physically unclonable functions (PUFs), and object-specific physical fingerprints to establish verifiable relationships between an asset and its digital identity.

Initial commercial applications include luxury goods, fine art, watches, jewelry, and other high-value physical assets. The broader opportunity extends into supply chains, industrial infrastructure, and defense applications.

We are seeking our first Chief Executive Officer to lead institutional fundraising, technical development, strategic partnerships, and commercialization.

The Opportunity

This is an opportunity to build a potentially category-defining technology company from its earliest stage.

Provenia has established its intellectual property foundation and strategic vision. The incoming CEO will work directly with the founder to secure financing, engage engineering and commercialization partners, validate the technology, and establish a scalable business.

The CEO’s first and most important responsibility is securing external investment capital.

This is an operating leadership position, not an advisory or consulting role.

Key Responsibilities

• Personally originate, lead, negotiate, and close institutional, venture, or strategic investment financing.
• Develop and execute a milestone-driven capital formation strategy.
• Establish relationships with qualified investors, strategic partners, and potential customers.
• Lead selection and management of technical development partners to achieve a credible proof-of-concept demonstration.
• Translate Provenia’s protected intellectual property into commercially viable products and services.
• Establish commercialization strategies, initial market positioning, and strategic partnerships.
• Develop operating budgets, financial projections, investor presentations, and execution milestones.
• Build the organizational infrastructure required to scale the company following financing.

Required Qualifications

Demonstrated personal success raising startup investment capital is mandatory.

Candidates must have:

• Personally originated, led, and successfully closed startup equity financings or strategic investment transactions.
• Established relationships with institutional investors, venture capital firms, family offices, or strategic corporate investors.
• Senior leadership experience building, financing, or commercializing technology businesses.
• Strong financial judgment, negotiation capabilities, and investor communication skills.
• The ability to operate independently in an early-stage, resource-constrained environment.
• A practical, execution-oriented approach to solving technical and commercial challenges.
• Authorization to work in the United States.

Experience in cybersecurity, hardware authentication, digital identity, semiconductor technology, or deep-tech commercialization is particularly desirable.

Prior CEO title is not mandatory. Demonstrated execution and capital formation are more important than credentials or titles.

Advisory involvement in fundraising, without direct responsibility for securing and closing investment, does not satisfy the fundraising requirement.

Compensation

• Base salary: $144,000 annually, subject to the company’s initial funding arrangements.
• Equity: 4% fully diluted, vesting over four years with a one-year cliff.
• Financing success bonus: Negotiable, tied to successful capital formation.
• Post-financing compensation review: Salary reassessment following successful institutional financing.
• Benefits: To be established as appropriate for the company’s stage and resources.

This position offers meaningful executive ownership in a company pursuing a substantial market opportunity.

Application Requirements

In addition to a résumé, applicants must describe at least two startup equity or strategic financings they personally originated, led, and successfully closed, including:

1. Approximate capital raised and financing stage.
2. Investor type and transaction structure.
3. Their specific responsibility in originating, negotiating, and closing the transaction.

Fundraising accomplishments should be independently verifiable through appropriate investor, executive, board, or transaction-counsel references.

Candidates without demonstrated direct capital-raising experience will not be considered.

Our Vision

Provenia’s ambition extends beyond authenticating individual products. We seek to establish a foundational trust infrastructure through which physical assets can possess independently verifiable, cryptographically secured identities.

We are looking for a CEO who recognizes the scale of that opportunity and has the fundraising experience, conviction, and execution capabilities to bring it to market.