Head of Marketing and Sales

This post is not for every marketer.We are building the next unicorn and you would be joining it in its infancy. Eighteen months old, bootstrapped, revenue up roughly tenfold in six months, and we have never lost a client. The mission comes down to contributing to human evolution, and we are looking for our next key player.Head of Marketing and Sales. Someone ruthless, who loves the detail, makes complex things simple, and focuses on outcomes rather than tasks.The opening problemThe constraint is simple to state, and it has been beyond everyone who has applied so far.I have owned marketing myself since the beginning. It worked. The positioning is ours, the market knows who we are, and every client we have won came through it or founder’s network. What I no longer have is time. The strategies I want to run are written and sitting there, and I am the reason they are not live. Our ambition is large. The interesting part is getting there fast enough that it stays fun.Why this exists nowThis role exists because the next stage needs someone experienced enough to execute it and confident enough to challenge us, and as connected to the mission as we are.What we intend to execute:Positioning as the world's leading AI consultancy. Getting in front of the audience we are built for, on every channel they already use. Value created before anyone is asked to buy. A client acquisition model that replaces a founder's calendar. And all of it running in a flow that does not need us sitting inside it.The mandateYour mandate is one sentence. Take us to five million ARR inside twelve months, with a machine that runs without a founder inside it.The laneYou own demand, positioning and you own the number. Every channel we go to market on. Both halves of the funnel. The SDR you will hire and manage. The measurement layer that finally tells us what a client costs us. The marketers who deliver results for our clients. And our own marketing, for the first time since I started doing it myself.You do not own the delivery standard or the final client escalation, which sit with Zoë, our President, and thirty years of doing that properly. You do not own engineering, which you brief rather than manage.I am telling you what sits outside your lane because that’s what I would want to know before taking the call, and because everything inside it is genuinely yours.What has to be true in twelve monthsTwelve months from your start date, we will be at:Five million ARR, which is roughly a 15x increase on where we are now.Six to eight new clients a month, arriving through the engine rather than through someone we already knew.Ninety-five percent of our discovery calls sourced without a founder in the loop.What a client costs us to acquire, by channel, with the payback period, replacing the honest "we do not know" above.The evidence barHere is what will happen in the room, so you can decide now weather to invest time or not.I will ask you to pick one funnel you owned personally for six months or longer, and walk it from money collected back to money spent. Backwards, from memory, with rational and reasoning because I can. Absolute figures at every stage rather than percentages, and the rational behind every percentage you do give me. Which stage was the constraint, and how you found it. What got worse, what you tested and how you solved or couldn’t solve. How many months the acquisition cost took to pay back, and what the cohort actually retained rather than what your model assumed. If your chain stops before revenue, tell me where it stops. If a team did it, tell me which part was yours and I will assess that part.Your experience & process of positioning, funnel building, and client acquisition.What I will not read: impressions, reach, followers, engagement rate, campaigns launched, awards, and any number a team hit that you are presenting as yours.Who should not applyYou are looking for a job. The people I want are not looking for a job. They are looking for an environment with enough room in it to be themselves, use everything they have, and get stretched past it.You think marketing is campaigns and content. Marketing is consumer psychology, emotion and authenticity, and the content is what falls out of getting those three right. If you already believe that, we will get on.You have never worked directly with a founder. I am not looking for someone who ran a channel inside a structure and never carried a number. If you have worked shoulder to shoulder with an ambitious founder, and you have felt what happens when that founder goes quiet and the energy leaves the building, come and find it again here.9. The tradeWhat is hard here.I ran marketing myself, and have been practicing marketing as a leader for a decade now so you get a founder with hands on experience who is still in the detail. There is no brand for you to stand behind and no media budget to hide behind, so every pound of spend has to be earned with a number first. Zoë and I have not taken a salary in eighteen months because everything goes back into the business also not because we had to, because we chose to, and that is the commitment we have. The team is ten people, most of them early in their careers, and you will build it before it starts helping you. And the equity plan for this seat is not drafted yet.What you getCompetitive salary, plus a structure of phantom shares so you can own what you build. It is tied to the same number you are being asked to hit, on purpose, so when we win you win.Hit the number and you are the revenue leader of a company several times this size, with fifteen to twenty people under you and the enterprise book still to build. I would rather promote you than hire above you.The askI will know the person I’m looking for in first interaction, but to filter the ones who are not interested enough below is the process you need to follow: One. A ninety-second voice note. Your own voice and only one take. Five million is my number. Would you carry it as yours with me? Yes or no in the first sentence, then what you would need in your first ninety days to say it.Two. Cover letter with a marketing strategy you executed and most proud of (In the most simple terms) Marketing is not about making things complex. (and I will also know who really read the JD, because key players care about where they are applying to work.Bonus: I’ll keep my eyes open for any calls I get directly...I have been the marketer here for eighteen months here. The next decade are not mine to run. If you think you should be the one running them, tell me why.