Resume template · Updated October 2026
Resume template for startup founders
Short answer
Catalyst fits a founder going back to a salaried job. It prints no summary and opens on work experience, so the company you built is the first block under your name, with skills and education after it. The fictional sample is a co-founder and CEO whose B2B scheduling startup closed in 2026, applying for senior product manager roles with four founder years and an earlier product job.
Download the startup founder sample
Julian is a fictional senior product manager. Replace every detail with your own before you send it.
The files are made in your browser by Resumity's own exporters, from this sample. The builder opens it as your own resume: click any line to replace it. Free plan, no watermark.
Why Catalyst suits a startup founder resume
Catalyst opens straight on work experience and prints no summary, so the founder role, with its customers, hires and wind-down, sits directly under the name. Its large left-aligned name and teal headings are made for experienced people whose latest job carries the application, which is exactly the founder's position.
Second choice: Leslie. Leslie also prints experience before skills but keeps a summary, useful if you want two sentences explaining why you are leaving your own company.
What goes in each section, in Catalyst's order
Catalyst prints its sections in a fixed order, the same in the PDF and the Word file. Here is that order for this sample, and what to put in each section.
- Work Experience. Use the title you actually held (Co-founder and CEO) and treat the company like any employer: name, city, dates. Founders do everything, so choose the bullets that match the target job, here discovery, specs and the team you hired, and give the company's outcome a plain bullet of its own.
- Skills. Open with what a product hiring manager screens for, then the founder skills that carry over: pricing, hiring, investor updates. Leave out the chores you covered only because nobody else could, such as payroll or the office lease, unless the new role needs them.
- Education. Degree, school and year. An accelerator is not a degree; if you went through one, mention it in a founder bullet or the advising list instead.
- Certifications. A product or agile credential shows you know how product work runs inside a larger company. Catalyst prints it near the end, so let the headline carry the target role and keep this line short.
- Advising. Mentoring, advising or angel work keeps your network visible without crowding the job history. One dated line each is enough; drop anything that competes with the employer you are applying to.
The sample resume as text
The same content as the files above, so you can copy a line or compare it with your own.
Julian Park
Senior Product Manager, Former Co-founder and CEO (B2B SaaS)
Austin, TX | julian.park@example.com | (512) 555-0148 | linkedin.com/in/sample-julian-park
Experience
Co-founder and CEO, Shiftwise Labs (closed 08/2026), Austin, TX (03/2022 to 08/2026)
- Co-founded a scheduling tool for independent physical therapy clinics and grew it to 46 paying clinics and about $310K in annual recurring revenue.
- Led product discovery: interviewed more than 120 clinic owners and front-desk staff and wrote the specs for the first 18 months of releases.
- Hired and managed a team of six: four engineers, a product designer and a customer success lead.
- Raised a $1.2M pre-seed round from two angel groups and sent monthly updates to investors.
- Wound the company down after growth stalled, moving every clinic to a partner product with 60 days of notice and full data exports.
Product Manager, Cobalt Ridge Health Software, Dallas, TX (06/2018 to 02/2022)
- Owned the patient intake module of an outpatient records system used by about 900 clinics.
- Shipped online pre-registration, which cut average front-desk check-in time from 9 to 5 minutes at pilot sites.
- Ran quarterly roadmap reviews with sales, support and compliance leads.
Business Analyst, Ridgeway Medical Billing, Houston, TX (07/2016 to 05/2018)
- Turned billing team requests into requirements for the claims software vendor and tested each release.
Advising
- Mentor, Lone Star Founders Accelerator, 01/2024 to Present: monthly office hours on customer discovery for first-time founders.
- Guest speaker, product management course, Hill Country State University, spring 2026.
Education
Bachelor of Science, Industrial Engineering, Gulf Coast State University (05/2016)
Certifications
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Scrum Alliance (2019)
Skills
Product discovery, Roadmapping, Pricing and packaging, SaaS metrics (ARR, churn), Hiring and team building, Jira, Figma, Amplitude, SQL (basic), HubSpot, Investor and board updates, Customer interviews
How to make the sample yours
Let the headline name the job you want
With no summary on the page, the line under your name carries the target. Put the employee title first ("Senior Product Manager") and the founder role after it, so a recruiter reads the job you want before the job you had.
Say how the company ended, once
Shut down, acquired, merged or handed to a new CEO: readers will wonder, so answer in one bullet. The sample's wind-down bullet also shows care for customers, which says more about you than the outcome does.
Share numbers at a comfortable precision
Customers, revenue, team size and money raised show scale. Round them ("about $310K ARR") and leave out investor names and anything your shareholder agreements keep confidential.
Rebalance for the role you target
Going for operations jobs? Move the hiring, vendor and process bullets up and cut the discovery detail. Going back to engineering? Lead with what you built and the stack you built it on.
Keep the salaried job from before the company
Your last employee role proves you can work inside a team with a manager above you. Three bullets there are worth keeping even when the founder years look more impressive.
Keywords to keep where they are true
Terms this kind of resume is usually searched for. Use the posting's exact wording, and only for work you have done.
- product strategy
- product discovery
- customer interviews
- roadmap
- B2B SaaS
- go-to-market
- pricing
- ARR
- churn
- hiring
- cross-functional leadership
- stakeholder management
- fundraising
- Jira
- Amplitude
Mistakes to avoid
- A title like "Founder, CEO, CTO and Head of Sales". Pick the one you held on paper and show the rest of the work in bullets.
- Hiding the closure. A founder entry that ends in 2026 with no word on what happened invites a worse guess than the truth.
- Bullets about vision and disruption. A hiring manager wants to know what you built, sold and shipped, and who reported to you.
- Counting the side-project months before launch as full-time founder time. Use the dates the company was your main job.
How the sample PDF reads in text extractors
We exported this sample with Resumity's PDF exporter in Chrome on 2026-10-29 and read the file back with three open-source text extractors. This shows whether software that turns a PDF into text can recover it; it is not a test of any commercial applicant tracking system. How we test templates.
| Extractor | Name, email, phone | Headings | Bullets intact |
|---|---|---|---|
| pdf.js 4.10.38 | All found | 5 of 5 | 9 of 9 |
| pdftotext (Xpdf) 4.00 | All found | 5 of 5 | 9 of 9 |
| pypdf 6.13.0 | All found | 5 of 5 | 9 of 9 |
Frequently asked questions
How do I put my own startup on a resume?
As a job: your title, the company name, the city and the dates you worked on it full-time. Add three to five bullets on customers, product and team, then one plain bullet on how it ended.
Will employers worry that a former founder will leave to start another company?
Some will ask. A salaried job before the company and a headline naming the employee role you want both help. Have a straight answer ready for the interview about why you want to join a team now.
Should my title say Founder or CEO?
Whatever you were. "Co-founder and CEO" is common and fine. If you are moving into a technical role and you were the technical founder, "Co-founder and CTO" tells the reader more.
What if my startup failed?
Say it closed, with a short reason if it helps, such as "wound down after growth stalled". The years of building, selling and hiring are still experience, and the way you closed it can show judgement.
How do I list a startup that was acquired?
Keep the founder entry and add the acquisition month in a bullet. If you stayed on, list your role at the buyer as its own entry above it, with its own dates.
Will applicant tracking systems read this Catalyst PDF?
The sample PDF read back with its contact details, all 5 section headings and all 9 bullets intact in three open-source text extractors (pdf.js, pdftotext and pypdf). Commercial systems such as Workday, Greenhouse or Taleo were not tested, and each employer configures its own.