Founding GTM Operator

About the Job

Founding go-to-market role at a fast growing, venture-backed B2B AI startup. Own our growth engine end-to-end.

Position

• Founding GTM Operator (Full-Time)
• Reporting to: CEO
• Location: San Francisco (4 days/week in person)

Compensation

$90,000-$110,000 base salary, plus your choice of equity or a bonus linked to company revenue (bonus expected to be $10,000+ for this role).

The Role

We already know how to find and close customers. We are now hiring our Founding GTM Operator: a generalist who owns demand generation and turns our go-to-market into a repeatable growth engine. This is one of the most critical hires at Kato and you'll work directly with the CEO.

On the outbound and conference side, that means getting sharper and more sophisticated about how we find customers - tracking the right buying signals, testing new plays, and expanding our conference presence.

And on the brand side, it’s wide open. We want to turn Kato into a household name in the lending space. You'll own building our presence from scratch: events, webinars, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, blogs. When someone in this industry thinks about AI for servicing & collections, we want them to think of Kato first.

Across both, we don't just want someone who can run the motion - we want someone who builds the system behind it, using AI and automation to take out as much manual work as possible.

This role is a fit if you have 1-3 years of experience and

• You are a former founder, or owned GTM / growth at an early-stage startup
• You have done either sales development (SDR/BDR) or demand-focused marketing (MDR, field or event marketing) - a role where you were measured on pipeline/revenue.

This role is not a fit if

• If your background is analytics / data focused without direct exposure to revenue
• If your background is pure brand or content marketing measured on reach and impressions

Key Responsibilities

Outbound & Lead Generation (50%)

• Build and maintain a comprehensive database of the lending market
• Own end-to-end outbound: research, list building, copy, multi-channel outreach (email + LinkedIn), message refining
• Create and manage nurture campaigns for older or dormant leads
• Run Kato’s conference efforts (e.g. outreach, marketing campaigns, booths)
• Systematize relentlessly - automate list building, signal tracking, personalization, and sequencing wherever you can with AI and other tooling

Content & Marketing (30%)

• Define Kato’s content strategy by creating blog posts, newsletters, and other top-of-funnel materials
• Launch Kato’s marketing efforts - e.g. webinars, in person events
• Systematize relentlessly - automate research and content drafting wherever you can with AI and other tooling

Sales Operations (20%)

• Build custom collateral for prospect meetings and keep Kato's core materials current
• Own GTM reporting - define what we measure (e.g. outbound conversion rates, pipeline velocity, meeting-to-opportunity conversion) and act on them

Requirements

We covered who this role is a fit for above. Beyond that you

• Have 1-3 years of full-time work experience and a Bachelor’s degree in Business or related field
• Are a structured thinker who questions assumptions and reasons independently, rather than taking things at face value
• Are coachable and quick to act on feedback
• Have exceptional written communication
• Are comfortable operating with high agency and driving independent progress toward company goals
• Have strong attention to detail, organization, and follow-through
• Are AI-native and automation-minded, with a track record of using AI tools to remove manual work
• Are proficient with common business tools such as Google Workspace (e.g. Google Docs, Google Sheets) and Slack. Experience with CRM systems like Hubspot preferred