Location: San Francisco, CA
Marketing and Growth Leader (Director/VP)
Our client company: Plastiq — www.plastiq.com
Plastiq is billpay with benefits.
Everyday payments have become second nature: we swipe a card, tap a button, or press submit. But many of our most important bills — a child’s care or tuition, critical business expenses, or taxes and rent — haven’t caught up. Billions of checks are still written today. Wire transfers can be confusing. Payments are slow, late, or even unaccounted for.
We set out to solve these challenges.
Our mission? To make bill payment simple and seamless. Plastiq lets you pay bills in the way that works best for you.
The Backstory. As you can see from the above, we’re creating a new category of bill pay that provides many benefits. Initially successful with savvy consumers, Plastiq provides convenience and a way to rapidly earn credit card rewards by allowing customers to pay vendors who don’t normally accept credit cards (eg landlords, universities, government agencies). More recently, we’ve seen a whole new customer set – entrepreneurs, businesses owners, controllers, CFOs – come to Plastiq because they value an additional benefit: maximizing their company’s working capital. By allowing customers to put virtually any expense on their credit card, we’re helping them fully tap the line of credit they’ve already earned on their MasterCard, Visa, Discover and American Express cards. We need your help to tell this story simply and at scale.
This is the kind of person we think we need:
You’re not afraid of big challenges. We’re creating a new category here that has the potential to improve business outcomes for millions of entrepreneurs and business owners. At the same time, you have to deliver short-term results – both driving a self-serve business and feeding leads to our new and growing sales teams. On top of that, you’re helping the company fully capture a new customer segment – small and medium-sized business that is the future of Plastiq.
Still reading? Ok, then:
A testing mindset is second nature. Plan, test, grow. You have ideas for how we can grow but since we’re a startup, you can plan tests that help prove your hypothesis, iterate and scale from there. You understand how to sequence go-to-market programs that help us manage burn wisely while giving you what you need to grow the business.
You’ve seen the other side and can help lead the company in the right direction. You understand what our challenges will be a year or two from now and can help prepare the company and your team to meet them. Likely you’ve done this before at another high-growth startup or can share examples of how your experience would translate to Plastiq. You’ll work closely with our executive team as well as across teams – product, people ops, operations, etc – and so are comfortable debating ideas to get to the right solution for Plastiq.
You create order out of chaos. This point will mainly benefit the team you manage. Initially, you’ll manage a team of ~5. But, if we’re successful, you’ll likely manage a team 3x that size by the end of 2019 including extension team members such as agencies. What examples can you provide of how you’ve inspired people who work for you, helped them achieve their full potential and advance their career goals?
You’re fluent in at least 2 of these 3 dimensions: high-growth start-ups, selling to SMBs, fintech. As we’ve hired other people, we’ve come to realize that there is a lot to learn about our unique business opportunity. So, it really helps if you come already well-versed in at least 2 of the 3 dimensions of our go-to-market needs.
That’s it? Challenge us, maybe we don’t have this right and your perspective will help us better understand why you’re the perfect candidate.
Problem we’re trying to solve: create a new category, build awareness and drive demand
Strategic and Smart as evidenced by past experiences creating a new category or similar effort. Examples of industry-defining companies: Marketo, Apple, Slack
Work closely with management team to design and define marketing strategy
SMB
Fintech
Startup
More about testing mindset. Able to construct experiments that lead to learnings that lead to scaling business
Background – you may have been the CEO of your own startup…
We’re looking for a data-driven, humble, experiment-driven and “roll-up-your sleeves” DO-er who has a track record of scaling digital growth engines and coming up with new playbooks.
We’re looking for a Director, Marketing to drive customer acquisition and retention efforts of our primary audience – established and mature small and medium-sized businesses. Your mission is to build the demand generation strategy and programs that drive leads for our inside sales and account development teams and grow overall revenue.
The successful candidate understands our core audience and how to reach them cost-effectively. You know how to run integrated campaigns including email marketing, event/webinar and lead nurture tactics. You can plan, execute and analyze the success of your programs, knowing when to cut back and when to double down. You’re a strategic thinker who understands how to build content to drive business needs (for SEO, customer acquisition, etc). You’ll collaborate closely with sales, product and growth teams to ensure leads are qualified and develop lead-handling processes to optimize conversion into qualified opportunities while managing a small team.
Specifically, the Director of Marketing is responsible for:
Conceptualizing and executing integrated campaigns across email, digital, events and webinars, direct mail, traditional media and other channels.
Working with co-marketing partners to develop campaign ideas for their customers
Building a growth-focused content engine, tapping into resources from across the company.
Partnering with product, growth and sales teams to define and track the end-to-end lead to opportunity to deal conversion process, providing visibility to cross-functional and executive teams on results.
Managing budget, infrastructure and programs costs to deliver the best ROI.
Leading and developing a small team to support growth efforts.
There is room to grow in this role with possibility of owning additional areas such as brand and PR/Comms.
qualifications
10-15+ years experience
Able to manage 3-5 people now and scale the team as you find success
Ability to lead and inspire those around you and grow small team into powerhouse
Track record of setting and achieving campaign goals/quota
Exceptional writing, critical thinking, and communication skills
Strong analytical and technical aptitude
Experience managing external agencies
Self-starter who can take ownership and proactively resolve issues
Work in San Francisco
education
BA/BS required. MBA preferred.
to inquire:
contact Dan Green: dgreen@vpofmarketing.com