Founding Product Marketing Manager (PMM) at VC-backed Startup – NYC (Hybrid) (New York City Metropolitan Area)

We’re partnering with a venture-backed consumer travel and social platform to hire their first marketing hire. This role reports directly to the founders and owns positioning, launches, growth loops, content, and lifecycle from scratch. The product already has strong organic pull, and this hire gets to build the brand and growth engine around it.

Amazing team, backed by top-tier VCs and repeat founders. 

Why Join

• Be an early builder: Shape the product, culture, and direction from the ground up with real ownership over what you build
• Tackle interesting problems: Work across AI, social graphs, and real-world coordination with a modern tech stack
• Competitive compensation: Salary, benefits, and meaningful equity so you share in what the team builds together
• Backed by top angels: Supported by founders and operators from leading consumer and travel tech companies

About the Role

The company is looking for a Founding Product Marketing Manager to own how it goes to market, grows, and talks to the world. As the first marketing hire, you’ll define the narrative, build the growth engine from scratch, and sit at the intersection of product, brand, and user acquisition. You’ll work directly with the founders to turn an early product with strong organic pull into a category-defining consumer brand.

What You’ll Do

• Own positioning & messaging: Define how the company talks about the product across every touchpoint: website, app store, product onboarding, social, and press. Turn complex product capabilities into simple, resonant stories that make people say “I need this.”
• Drive product launches: Quarterback major feature and product launches end-to-end, from narrative and creative assets to distribution channels, creator/community seeding, and post-launch analysis.
• Architect the growth & viral loops: Partner closely with Product and Engineering to design, test, and optimize in-product growth loops (invites, trip sharing, calendar sync, group coordination) that turn every user into a distribution channel.
• Build the content & social engine: Establish the brand’s voice across social channels (Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn), newsletter, and community spaces. Work with creators, travel tastemakers, and super-connectors to seed organic adoption.
• Own lifecycle & activation: Build automated and high-touch lifecycle journeys (onboarding emails, push notifications, seasonal moments) that get users to their “aha” moment fast and keep them coming back before every trip.
• Supply-side & ecosystem marketing: Help launch and grow the marketplace and partner ecosystem, crafting the value proposition for curated properties, experience hosts, and travel brands joining the platform.
• Run rapid experiments: Continuously test channels, hooks, landing pages, and referral mechanics. Measure what matters, kill what doesn’t work, and double down on what compounds.

Who You Are

• 3–7+ years in product marketing, growth marketing, or founding marketer roles at a high-velocity B2C consumer app, social platform, or marketplace (travel, lifestyle, social, creator economy, or prosumer tools are a big plus).
• A sharp storyteller with great taste: You write crisp, human copy with zero corporate fluff. You have an instinctive eye for design, aesthetics, and cultural relevance; you know what makes a consumer brand feel magnetic.
• Product-obsessed & analytical: You’re just as comfortable in Figma and writing launch copy as you are digging into analytics (activation rates, DAU/MAU, retention cohorts) to figure out why users drop off or share.
• AI-native operator: You leverage modern AI tools (LLMs, image/video generation, workflow automation) to move 5x faster, whether prototyping creative, scaling content, or automating growth ops.
• Zero-to-one builder: You thrive in ambiguity, don’t wait for a playbook, and love getting your hands dirty. You’d rather ship a scrappy experiment today than spend three weeks on a strategy deck.
• Deeply connected to how people travel and gather: You’re the person in your friend group who organizes the trip, knows the best spots, or loves connecting people across cities.

Requires existing US work authorization. Reach out if you have any questions or are open to hearing about other opportunities!