Growth & Brand Lead | Contractor

ABOUT THE ENGAGEMENT This engagement is for an experienced Growth & Brand Lead to define the brand of an early-stage venture, set its marketing strategy, and lead the execution that brings both to life. The venture needs someone who owns positioning, narrative, and visual identity, sets the strategy the execution runs against, and holds the quality bar. You'll define the what and the why, and lead the team that runs the day-to-day how. This is a hands-on engagement, not an oversight one. You'll be in the tools yourself — writing the pivotal copy, shaping the creative, and building the AI workflows — producing the highest-leverage work alongside the team, not just reviewing it. At this stage the Lead is a builder-operator: senior enough to set strategy, hands-on enough to make the most important things yourself. Hands-on here means owning the craft, not absorbing the daily channel execution the team handles. The founder is looking for someone who can think like a founder, make decisive brand choices, and build the systems that let great marketing scale. You'll work closely with the founder and operators to keep how the venture presents itself true to what it actually is. The venture also needs someone deeply AI-native. AI isn't an add-on to how you work — it's fundamental to how you think, create, and operate. You instinctively reach for AI across strategy, research, positioning, messaging, design, content, campaigns, analytics, experimentation, and operational workflows, and you're fluent across the current generation of tools and whatever ships next. You know when AI should lead, when human judgment should prevail, and how to build repeatable AI-powered workflows that let a small team produce work rivaling much larger organizations. Beyond building a remarkable brand, you'll help shape an AI-first marketing function — prompting standards, knowledge systems, creative workflows, automation, and scalable operating practices that let the team move faster without compromising originality, strategic thinking, or brand integrity. If you're energized by building a brand from close to a blank page, leading and building in equal measure, shaping how a young company is understood by the market, and redefining what modern AI-powered marketing looks like — if that's you, let's talk. WHAT YOU'LL DO Brand Foundation - Define the venture's positioning, narrative, voice, and visual identity from a near-blank page. - Make the core strategic choices: who the venture is for, what it stands for, and what it deliberately is not. - Build and maintain a coherent brand system that every touchpoint can be built against. - Evolve the brand as the venture matures — without over-investing in assets while things are still changing. Marketing Strategy & Go-to-Market - Own the marketing strategy: what the venture says, to whom, through which channels, and why — including a content strategy that earns attention rather than only buys it. - Shape go-to-market storytelling for customers, partners, and the broader market. - Prioritize where marketing effort and budget go, and defend those choices. - Translate venture goals into a marketing plan the execution function can run against. Leading Marketing Execution - Direct the venture's marketing execution — setting priorities, standards, and the quality bar. - Turn strategy into clear, actionable briefs and hold work to them. - Establish a working rhythm (goals, review cadence, feedback) that keeps execution fast and on-brand. - Bring enough fluency in growth and performance marketing to set targets, interpret data, and distinguish exceptional execution from average. - Build an AI-first marketing function by integrating AI into research, creative development, campaign planning, experimentation, reporting, knowledge management, and execution. - Develop scalable prompting standards, AI workflows, and operating systems that let the team consistently produce world-class work with greater speed and leverage. Narrative & Content - Own the through-line from strategy to expression across the website, pitch decks, product experiences, campaigns, and every external touchpoint. - Own content marketing strategy — editorial direction, content-led acquisition, and the content that builds audience and demand across owned and earned channels. You set the standard and direct production (human and AI) against it, rather than personally producing it all. - Set the standard for how the venture writes, communicates, and presents itself. - Ensure every external artifact reflects one coherent brand. - Leverage AI to accelerate research, ideation, messaging, creative exploration, and content production — while maintaining exceptional quality and brand consistency. Measurement - Define what success looks like for brand and marketing — and how it will be measured. - Use performance data to refine strategy, not simply report on outcomes. - Continuously test, learn, and improve marketing performance using both traditional analytics and AI-powered insights. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - A senior track record building or fundamentally reshaping a brand — not just running campaigns inside someone else's. - Proven experience setting marketing strategy and directing a team to execute against it. - A builder's instinct — senior enough to set strategy, hands-on enough to produce the highest-leverage work yourself, especially with AI. You lead by doing the hard parts, not by delegating them away. - Strong fluency in growth and performance marketing, with the ability to set targets, interpret data, and evaluate execution quality. - Strong content marketing judgment — you can set editorial direction and use content to build audience and drive demand, and direct a team (and AI) to produce it at volume without losing the brand's voice. - Outstanding writing, storytelling, and narrative instincts. - Comfort operating in ambiguity and building structure where none exists. - Exceptional communication skills and confidence working directly with founders and operating teams. - An AI-native mindset. AI isn't something you've recently adopted — it's how you naturally work, across strategy, research, positioning, messaging, creative, design, content, analytics, experimentation, and operations. - Deep hands-on experience with modern AI tools — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Midjourney, Nano Banana, Runway, Veo, ElevenLabs, Figma AI, Canva Magic Studio, Notion AI — and a curiosity to keep adopting the next generation. - The ability to distinguish where AI creates leverage, where human creativity creates advantage, and how the two work together to produce exceptional outcomes. NICE TO HAVE - Brand-building experience across multiple industries or categories. - Experience within venture studios, startups, or early-stage, high-growth environments. - Strong design fluency and the ability to direct and critique creative work. - Experience building premium brands in resource-constrained environments. - Experience running content-led growth (SEO, editorial, thought leadership, social) as a strategic channel. - Experience designing AI-first marketing systems — prompt libraries, automations, AI agents, knowledge bases, and scalable workflows that multiply a lean team's impact. ENGAGEMENT DETAILS - Independent contractor engagement — long-term and ongoing, not a full-time role. - Remote, with consistent overlap during core collaboration hours (9am-12pm PST). - Weekly hours and rate as set in this posting; compensation benchmarked to your market. - You'll partner directly with the founder and operators as the primary owner of the venture's brand and marketing.