Legal Counsel & Founder's Office Associate

What is Hunch?

Hunch is a dating app built for follow-through - designed to turn mutual interest into a real first date instead of another chat thread that fizzles out. Built for people tired of mindless swiping and commodified matchmaking, Hunch uses an AI matchmaker to cut the week of back-and-forth and get two interested people out of the app and into the same room.

With 2.4M+ daters, 1.47M+ dates planned, and 100% photo-verified profiles, Hunch is growing fast in the US by challenging the swipe-left/right norm of traditional apps. Hunch is a Series A funded ($23 Million) startup building the future of social discovery in a post-AI world.

Link to our fundraising announcement

Key offerings of Hunch:

• One Drop a Day: A small, hand-picked set of photo-verified profiles arrives daily - chosen for taste, lifestyle, and who's actually free to meet.  So every profile gets real attention instead of a mindless swipe.

• Interest Becomes a Plan: When both people want to meet, Hunch's AI matchmaker turns mutual interest into a confirmed date with a real time and place - no logistics to manage.

• Every Match, Verified: Every profile is matched to a live photo before it appears in anyone's drop. No bots, no catfishing - just real, trustworthy connections.

• Built to Move: Chats close after seven days and users hold a few conversations at a time - nudges designed to get people out the door, not scrolling forever.

About the Role

We are looking for a Sole Legal Counsel & Founder's Office Associate. This role will report directly to Ish Goel, Founder & CEO and will function across legal, commercial, growth and strategic projects.

This is not a traditional back-office legal role. You will advise teams across product, finance, growth, operations and technology, while also supporting the Founder's Office on high-priority business initiatives.

Concretely, in a given month you could be drafting and negotiating a vendor NDA, running KYC for a banking relationship, scoping and launching a new monetization feature end-to-end, setting up an affiliate program from the ground up - terms, structure, partner agreements - or reaching out to potential partners while we evaluate entering a new geography - sometimes all in the same week. This is a genuine hybrid of structured legal work and open-ended, zero-to-one business building, and the split between the two shifts depending on what the business needs at any given time.

You won't be figuring out every specialized question alone. For matters outside your immediate expertise, you'll have access to top-tier resources - not just standard legal tools, but on-demand support from tier 1 law firms, India or outside, whenever senior counsel input is needed.

Key Responsibilities

Commercial Contracts

• Draft, review and negotiate commercial agreements, including vendor, technology, marketing, consulting, partnership, licensing, NDA, data processing and other business agreements.

• Work directly with internal teams to understand the commercial context of each transaction and provide practical, risk-calibrated advice.

• Develop contract templates, negotiation playbooks, fallback positions and approval processes to make contracting faster and more consistent.

• Track contractual obligations, renewals, commercial commitments and key legal risks.

Corporate and Transaction Support

• Support corporate governance and compliance across Hunch's group entities — running legal operations across 5+ countries, from Singapore and Dubai to the US and India.

• Assist with board and shareholder documentation, corporate records, intercompany arrangements and regulatory filings.

• Support financing, investment, restructuring, and other strategic transactions, including due diligence and document review.

• Coordinate with external counsel, corporate service providers, investors, banks and other stakeholders.

• Assist with employment and cross-border regulatory matters relevant to Hunch's operations.

Product, Regulatory and Compliance

• Partner with product and technology teams on privacy, data protection, user safety, consumer protection and platform compliance matters.

• Research and assess laws and regulatory developments affecting dating apps, social platforms, AI-enabled products and online consumer businesses, and translate them into internal policies, product terms and privacy notices.

• Assist with payment, app-store and advertising regulatory matters relevant to Hunch's operations — for example, reviewing App Store and Apple policies on web checkouts, or analyzing how US case law on gaming apps is shaping the regulatory landscape for dating apps.

Founder's Office and Strategic Projects

• Work directly with the CEO and leadership team on high-priority projects that may not fall neatly within a single function - for example, scoping a new feature, or managing new growth and marketing channels from 0 to 1 (with the help of the team).

• Lead outreach to vendors and partners while the company assesses a new geography, business model or feature.

• Support commercial negotiations, vendor evaluations and strategic decision-making, driving projects from initial problem definition through research, stakeholder coordination and execution.

• Conduct structured research and prepare clear decision notes on new markets, vendors, partnerships, business models and regulatory questions — including reading through financial statements of other businesses to understand market landscapes.

• Convert complex legal or commercial issues into concise and actionable recommendations for leadership.

Legal Operations and AI

• Build scalable systems for contract intake, review, approvals, execution and recordkeeping.

• Use AI and other technology tools to improve legal research, drafting, redlining, risk identification and turnaround times.

• Identify recurring legal issues and create templates, processes and guidance that allow business teams to operate more independently.

Must-Have Skills

• Bachelor's degree in law from a recognised institution.

• Approximately 3–5 years of experience in a law firm, in-house legal team or a combination of both.

• Strong drafting, reviewing and negotiation skills.

• Ability to understand the underlying business objective of a transaction and distinguish material risks from theoretical ones.

• Strong legal research and analytical skills, with the ability to communicate conclusions clearly and concisely.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Ability to manage multiple workstreams and operate effectively in a fast-moving environment.

• Comfort working directly with founders, senior leadership and cross-functional teams.

• Strong ownership and attention to detail.

Who We're Looking For

• Commercially minded: you see legal advice as a tool to help the business make informed decisions, not just a way to flag risk.

• High ownership and a builder mindset: you take responsibility for moving matters forward without waiting for perfect instructions, and want to build a legal function, not just maintain one.

• A structured thinker: you can take an ambiguous problem, identify the questions that matter, and arrive at a clear, practical recommendation — knowing when a concise business answer beats a detailed legal memo.

• Curious and resourceful: comfortable researching unfamiliar industries, regulations and commercial models, and communicating what you find to lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

• AI-forward: you actively look for ways technology can improve the quality and speed of legal work.
  

What We Offer

• Competitive pay along with an annual performance-linked incentive (PLI).

• Employee benefits like Medical Insurance.

• Participation in Employee Phantom Grants Program (Stock Options).

Life at Hunch

Hunch is a small team focused on shipping the parts of dating that usually stall - getting two interested people into the same room.

What we hire for - the ABCs

Most companies have a long list of values nobody remembers. We have three, and they show up in how we hire, what we ship, and how we talk about the work:

• Authenticity - Real before polished. We build for real people on real first dates, and we hire the same way. No theater. If something's not working, say so; if it is, ship it.

• Boldness - Dating got stuck because nobody wanted to break the pattern. We make the call on what to ship, what to cut, and what doesn't belong in the product, even when it's the harder choice.

• Curiosity - The best people here ask a lot of small, useful questions — about users, about the data, about each other's work. We trust people who keep learning over people who already know.

How we work

• Ownership, not theater - You own outcomes, not status updates. Fewer meetings, fewer dashboards, more shipping.

• Flexibility that's real - We care about the work, not the hours you sit at a desk. Take the afternoon, take the week - show up for the stuff that matters.

• Move fast, don't burn out - Hunch ships quickly because we cut the slow stuff, not because we work people into the ground. Velocity comes from focus, not from hours.

• Small team, big problems - You'll work on things that matter to millions of people trying to actually meet someone. Every role moves the product.

Backed by Global Investors

Hunch is backed by Hashed, AlphaWave, Brevan Howard and Polygon Studios.

Experienced Leadership

Hunch is founded by a trio of industry veterans: Ish Goel (CEO), Nitika Goel (CPO), and Kartic Rakhra (CMO) - serial entrepreneurs with their last exit from Nexus Mutual, a web3 consumer-tech startup.