Founding GTM Lead (Growth & Community)

EQL Tech•San Francisco, CA

4h•Onsite

About The Position

This is a founding GTM operator role focused on building the company's community-led acquisition engine from the ground up. This includes developing strategies for referrals, partnerships, local parent communities, and field work, all while using data to refine what works. The role is a hands-on founding Individual Contributor (IC) position, requiring close collaboration with families, analysis of metrics, and interaction with the founders. The client is a venture-backed Fintech Leader aiming to provide trusted infrastructure for families navigating the US public education budget, specifically state-funded Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). The current system is described as broken, with confusing and slow government portals. The company's mission is to build a modern, delightful consumer fintech experience where adoption is driven by credibility, relationships, and lived experience, rather than traditional advertising. The company has raised $16M from top-tier VCs and angels and is composed of elite engineers and leaders from companies like Stripe, Mercury, Goldman Sachs, and SpaceX.

Requirements

3–6 years in consumer growth, GTM ops, community-led growth, partnerships, or a closely related go-to-market role.
Proven ownership of non-paid acquisition loops: referrals, ambassador/community programs, events, partnerships, or field-led growth.
Comfort moving between the field and the spreadsheet: talking to parents and partners, then translating those insights into funnel math.
A strong instinct for which partnerships compound and which ones create only temporary noise.
A bias toward action, experimentation, and iteration over long strategy documents.
Experience in a trust-sensitive consumer category such as edtech, healthtech, family finance, childcare, or mission-driven fintech.
High ownership, high output, and comfort operating as a founding IC without a large team or budget.
Strong academic pedigree and the judgment to work closely with founders on a new growth motion.

Responsibilities

Build our client’s community-led GTM motion from scratch across referrals, partnerships, and parent/community channels.
Spend real time with families to understand what creates trust, what triggers adoption, and what causes drop-off — then turn that into concrete GTM decisions.
Design and test referral systems, partnership programs, and community loops that compound over time.
Build field-led growth in the places where trust is earned: homeschool co-ops, special needs groups, local parent pods, education events, advocacy communities, and similar networks.
Work across founders, product, and operations to improve onboarding conversion and move toward a clear account-growth target.
Instrument funnels, cohorts, activation, retention, and conversion so the team can make sharper decisions faster.
Engage with community leaders, education stakeholders, and other ecosystem partners when it helps our client reach and serve families better.
Travel frequently for family visits, partner meetings, and community events.