Founder, Autonomous HazMat Classification

Forum's Venture Studio brings together ambitious people, brilliant ideas, and capital to build the best B2B SaaS businesses in the world, from 0 to 1. In addition to capital and an idea, we provide founders with access to investor networks, fundraising support, and the resources needed to build transformational companies. Our model is designed to help you move faster, develop better insights, and build companies that have a higher success rate than startups built in any other way.

We’re looking for a Founder/CEO to build an AI-native platform that automates hazardous materials classification, compliance documentation, and shipment execution — transforming a highly manual, error-prone process into intelligent, autonomous workflows.

What are we exploring?

Shipping hazardous materials — from batteries to chemicals to industrial parts — is governed by complex global regulations. Logistics and EHS teams still rely on PDF guides, fragmented databases, and manual forms. Errors can lead to rejected shipments, six-figure fines, and serious safety risks.

Despite the scale — over 1 million hazardous shipments move daily in the U.S. alone — most systems remain rules-based and manual. No dominant AI solution exists today to automate classification, documentation, and compliance execution.

We see a clear opportunity to build an agentic AI system that reads order data and SDSs, assigns UN numbers, generates Dangerous Goods Declarations, flags violations, and triggers downstream workflows in ERP, TMS, and customs systems — compressing hours of manual effort into minutes of automation.

As regulatory pressure increases and shipping volumes grow, this is a high-friction, high-frequency workflow ready for intelligent automation — with clear potential to expand into broader shipping and compliance markets.

Forum derisks and accelerates the Founder path by:

• A $250K USD investment, and an end-to-end fundraising playbook and network to raise your seed and Series A

• A validation partner with proven playbooks, networks, and the systems to validate, unlock your ICP, ignite your sales pipeline, and beyond

• The support of our experienced operating team - from business design, product development, growth, recruitment, legal and more

• Executing a winning GTM strategy to get to $50-100K ARR, and the right MVP to ensure early traction

• A community full of mentors, peers, and leaders

• $100K worth of business perks

About you:

• Early-stage operator experience, and expertise in one or more of the following areas: product development, business, or a domain expert

• The ability to attract, hire and lead world-class teams

• A demonstrated passion for technology’s ability to change the world

• A desire to be a venture-backed founder

• Ability to collaborate in North American time zones 

Please note, this is not an employment opportunity with Forum Ventures. If you are currently fundraising your pre-seed or Seed round, please pitch our investment team instead here.