Founding Growth Marketer

Sauna • San Francisco, CA

2d • Onsite

About The Position

This is a full-time, in-person role based in San Francisco (Presidio). The company is seeking a Founding Growth Marketer to own demand generation, taking strangers from never having heard of Sauna to signing up. The role involves a real budget from day one and reports directly to the founder. The initial focus will be on paid channels to quickly test messaging, creative, and positioning. As channels prove successful, the role will involve hiring against them. This is a hands-on role, requiring the individual to write posts, brief videos, buy media, and ship landing pages. The position requires a systems thinker who can map out the entire job system and identify parts that can be automated. Strong writing skills are essential, as is knowledge of current trends on platforms like X, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Technical ability to ship landing pages and brief SEO work without extensive support is also necessary. The role is a blank canvas with no established brand, historical data, or existing team, offering both appeal and risk. The first 30 days will focus on establishing robust measurement and analytics, including conversion tracking, match rate optimization, calculating fully loaded CAC, and analyzing unit economics per channel. Responsibilities include owning the top of the funnel end-to-end (paid, lifecycle, and compounding channels), running a creator program for a significant monthly Meta budget, building an affiliate program, developing a content engine using the product itself as the subject, shipping programmatic SEO and AEO with engineering support, and writing all copy (landing pages, ads, emails, posts, video scripts). The role also involves running launches end-to-end and reporting one key number weekly: new people who heard about Sauna and visited, and their cost. The ideal candidate has experience running ads hands-on, understands conversion events and tracking, has taken something from unknown to known, and is a systems thinker who has built automated systems with feedback loops. Exceptional writing skills and knowledge of current social media trends are required. Bonus points for experience with usage-based products, UGC creator programs, affiliate programs at scale, a portfolio of successful work, and existing relationships with relevant distribution channels. Candidates who prefer directing work over making it, or who only want to focus on conversion within an established funnel, may not be a good fit.

Requirements

• You have run actual ads with your own hands. You picked the channel, wrote the creative, set the budget, read the numbers, and killed what was not working.
• You understand what a conversion event is, why match rate matters, and what happens to a campaign when tracking is half broken.
• You have taken something from unknown to known. A product, a newsletter, a channel, a community, or your own company. You can tell me the starting number, the number a year later, and what you did in between.
• You are a systems thinker. You can step back from a task, map the whole system your job sits inside, and say which parts a machine should be doing.
• You have built something that does part of your job for you, with a feedback loop in it. Not a chat thread with context in it. A loop that gets better because you corrected it.
• You write unusually well. Punchy, specific, opinionated, and able to hold someone else's voice.
• You know what is working on X, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok this month.
• You are technical enough to ship a landing page and brief SEO work without filing a ticket for every change.
• Must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate before starting.
• Requires US work authorization, but open to O-1 or J-1 visa sponsorship for exceptional candidates.

Nice To Haves

• You have priced or grown a usage-based product and know why LTV to CAC is not enough when inference is your cost of goods.
• You have run a UGC creator program or an affiliate program at real volume.
• A portfolio of work that traveled, with the numbers attached.
• Existing relationships with creators, newsletters, or AI community distribution channels.
• Already using Sauna, or something like it, as part of how you work.

Responsibilities

• Own the top of the funnel end to end: paid on Meta and Google first, then lifecycle, then everything that compounds around them.
• Run a creator program. A six-figure monthly Meta budget needs 400 to 500 fresh creatives a month to keep working. That is a program you build with creators and agencies, not a set of ads you write.
• Build an affiliate program and treat it as a real channel. Revenue share, a reason for people to earn before they are customers, and a public place to sign up.
• Build a content engine with the product itself as the subject. Use Sauna to do your own job in public, and show real work rather than talking about capabilities.
• Ship programmatic SEO and AEO with an engineering partner. Answer engines cite YouTube, Reddit, and credible third-party coverage, so the work runs wider than our own pages.
• Write the copy yourself. Landing pages, ads, emails, posts, video scripts.
• Run launches end to end: positioning, copy, social, email, video brief, press, community.
• Report one number every week: how many new people heard about Sauna and came to look, and what each one cost.

Benefits

• Salary: $150,000 to $250,000, depending on experience and how much of the role you can own from day one + meaningful early-stage equity.
• Real media budget, set with Filip.
• Standard Wordware benefits: medical, dental, and vision.
• Daily lunch and dinner in the office.
• 401(k).
• Gym budget.
• The Presidio office with a sauna and the beach across the road.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed