Locked decision: Haga is solo-founded by Mushood Hanif. Team strength comes from an active, criteria-driven hire / co-founder search — not a multi-name roster for optics.
Cap table at incorporation: 90% founder / 10% option pool (locked within the 85–90 / 10–15 band). Candidates join via new grants from that pool (or a negotiated co-founder grant when someone clears). Do not reserve named equity for people who have not committed.
When outreach starts
| Trigger | Action |
|---|---|
| Evidence pack Ready (Decision 0) | Quiet outreach may begin |
| Soft raise / post-wire | Full-time hire capacity increases (compute + runway) |
| Candidate clears scorecard | Structure as employee (standard grant) or co-founder (larger grant + vesting) — only after mutual commit |
ICP buyer conversations and design-partner evals do not wait on a hire.
Role shape (pick one track per candidate)
| Track | Title posture | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| First hire | ML / eval engineer (or equivalent) | Strong builder who wants employment + equity; founder remains sole founder |
| Co-founder | Co-founder, ML systems / robotics eval | Peer-level ownership of harness, scoring, and technical GTM; clears bar below and wants founding risk |
Do not invent intermediate titles to look larger. One sharp hire beats five soft “founders.”
Must-haves (all tracks)
Candidate must clear all of:
- ML systems depth — ships models or evaluation pipelines in production or research-grade code (not demos-only)
- Robotics or physical-AI adjacency — policy eval, sim, world models, or closely related (CV / control / synthetic data with physics awareness)
- Reproducibility instinct — seeds, configs, CIs, failure cases; comfort defending numbers in diligence
- Async ownership — can own a pillar (Pillar 1 or 2) or continuous-scoring design without daily pair-programming
- Values fit — independent-auditor posture; no urge to turn Haga into a training-loop or public leaderboard product
Strong signals
- Prior work on robotics benchmarks, sim randomization, physics checkers, or world-model QA
- Published or open reproducible eval code with honest negative results
- Experience turning research harnesses into customer-facing reports or APIs
- Comfort talking to ICP (policy labs, synthetic-data vendors) without overselling
Disqualifiers
- Wants co-founder title without full-time commitment or IP assignment
- Primary interest is training / Sim2Real product (wrong company)
- Cannot explain a past eval result with seeds,
n, and claim boundaries - Expects reserved equity before contribution or before incorporation hygiene
Deal structure (draft)
| Element | Draft |
|---|---|
| Equity source | Unissued option pool (10% FD at incorporation) — new grants only |
| Employee grant | Standard early-hire band; 4yr / 1yr cliff unless counsel changes |
| Co-founder grant | Larger slice from pool or negotiated founder stock if joining at / before incorporation — counsel + sole founder approve in writing |
| IP | Assignment into Delaware entity (or Gate A side letter pre-Atlas) required before meaningful code access |
| Cash | Competitive for stage once raise closes; pre-raise may be equity-heavy or grant/contract |
Exact percentages stay internal until a named candidate is in diligence — not a public rate card.
Process (quiet search)
- Score against this page (must-haves first)
- Technical deep-dive: critique a Haga Pillar 1 or Pillar 2 result against the public Lab and methodology
- Working session: scoped harness or report improvement (paid trial if needed)
- Reference check on shipping + honesty under ambiguity
- Written offer: track (hire vs co-founder), grant, vesting, IP — then counsel templates
Log serious candidates privately (not in git). Public site and pitch stay sole founder until someone has signed.
Bus-factor mitigation (what investors hear)
Solo founder is acknowledged. Mitigation is this scorecard + active search + option pool reserved for builders — not a fake co-founder list. Post-close milestone M4 (locked): first ML/eval hire or co-founder offer accepted within 9 months of wire — Milestone model · Use of funds.
Related: Bios · Founder equity & IP · Use of funds.