Founding Marketing Lead - job 1 of 2

Founding Marketing Lead

Full-Time · San Francisco · Adapt

👋 Who We Are

Adapt API is a venture-backed startup building the agentic operations layer for Property & Casualty (P&C) insurance.

Today, walking into an insurance agency is like stepping into a time machine. Filing cabinets, fax machines, piles of incoming and outgoing mail. What you don't see is that even for the parts that have been "digitized", needless manual work abounds. Few systems communicate directly, leading to endless copy-pasting from emails to various proprietary web portals/desktop apps and back again.

Carrier by carrier, process by process, Adapt is bringing each of those manual and error-prone workflows into our comprehensive agentic workflow layer.

The implementation details are subject to change, but this is our north star, and the future we envision isn't possible without it.

💥 Why This Role Matters

We don't have a marketing function yet. That's the point.

This is a zero-to-one role at a company that already has traction. You won't spend six months doing research before you're allowed to ship. You'll walk in, assess what's working, form a point of view fast, and start building within weeks. Strategy and execution aren't separate phases here—they happen simultaneously, and you own both.

You'll work directly with the CEO and Head of Sales to build a demand engine that compounds: ABM motions targeting the right accounts, content that opens doors, campaigns that shorten sales cycles, and a brand that makes Adapt impossible to ignore in a category that's ripe for disruption.

If you need a big team, a long runway before results, or a committee to approve your ideas—this isn't it. If you're the kind of marketer who sees a blank canvas and gets excited, keep reading.

🚀 Why You Should Join Adapt

• Build the Marketing Function: You're not inheriting someone else's strategy or org. You define what marketing at Adapt looks like. That's rare—and it compounds in your career.

• Direct Line to Revenue: This role isn't a support function. You'll sit in pipeline reviews, influence sales strategy, and be measured on the deals your work puts in motion.

• Creative Latitude: We're not a conservative brand. We're looking for bold, unexpected ideas—the kind that make people in a sleepy industry stop and pay attention.

• Elite Comp: Strong cash (50th percentile), uncapped commission/bonus tied to pipeline impact, solid benefits, and startup equity that's actually meaningful (90th+ percentile).

• A+ Team & Backers: Backed by top investors, ex-Plaid execs, and industry insiders. The founding team is chock-full of multiple-time builders, insurance experts, and driven A+ talent—looking for more of the same.

• Momentum: Post-PMF. Revenue-generating. Growing lightning fast.

🎯 What You'll Do

• Own the Full Marketing Function: You set the strategy, you build the team (starting lean), and you execute. No one is going to hand you a playbook. You write it.

• Drive Demand—Fast: Build and run the demand generation engine from the ground up. Outbound-assisted campaigns, paid, SEO, events, partnerships—you know which levers to pull first and why.

• Lead the ABM Motion: Partner with the Head of Sales to identify and systematically penetrate key accounts. Design the playbooks, create the content, run the experiments. Make the right accounts impossible to ignore us.

• Execute on the Strategy You Set: This isn't a 'hand off to the team' role. You will be in the weeds. Writing copy, launching campaigns, testing messaging, analyzing results. You set the vision and you do the work.

• Build the Brand: Adapt is operating in an industry that hasn't seen a credible, modern brand in decades. You'll define our voice, our positioning, and how we show up—from landing pages to conference booths to cold email subject lines.

• Create the Content Engine: Commission, edit, and sometimes write the content that opens doors: case studies, thought leadership, ROI calculators, battle cards, nurture sequences. Content that makes AEs' jobs easier and gives prospects reasons to say yes.

• Measure What Matters: Build the attribution model and reporting framework that connects marketing activity to pipeline, not just impressions. Know your numbers cold and tell the story behind them.

• Partner with Sales Tightly: You don't throw leads over the fence. You sit in pipeline reviews, understand where deals are dying, and redesign campaigns and content to fix it. Marketing and Sales win together here.

🧠 What Makes You a Great Fit

• 4+ years in B2B marketing, with at least 2 years in a senior or lead role at an early-stage startup. You've built before, and you know what that actually requires.

• Generalist with demand gen at the core. You can write, design a campaign, set strategy, run paid, and brief a designer—but demand generation is where you live. You understand pipeline math and you optimize for it.

• ABM experience or strong instincts. You've built or run account-based motions before—or you have a clear, specific point of view on how to build one. You know the difference between ABM as a strategy and ABM as a buzzword.

• You play both positions. You can present a marketing strategy to the CEO on Monday and write the landing page copy to execute it on Tuesday. The gap between 'strategic' and 'executional' doesn't exist for you.

• Urgency is your default. You don't wait to be told when something is urgent. You move fast, ship, learn, and iterate. Done is better than perfect—and you know when each applies.

• Creative and rigorous. You generate bold, unexpected ideas and then you test them with discipline. You're as comfortable with a blank doc as you are with a spreadsheet.

• Relentlessly curious. You study what works in other industries and bring it back. You're always experimenting. You have strong opinions, loosely held.

• Clear communicator. You can write copy that converts, present strategy that lands, and give feedback that makes people better. Writing is a core skill, not a nice-to-have.

💫 Bonus Points

• Experience marketing an API, infrastructure, or developer-adjacent product—you know how to make a technical value prop feel urgent and human.

• You've marketed to SMBs or independent operators—you understand how they evaluate vendors and what actually moves them.

• You've run or contributed to a successful conference, field event, or community play.

• Insurance, fintech, or vertical SaaS background—you're not starting from zero on the industry.

• You've hired and managed a small marketing team and have opinions about what great junior talent looks like.

🧩 What Success Looks Like

• In 30 days: You've done a full audit of what's working, what's missing, and what's broken. You've shipped something—even small. You have a 90-day plan that Jake and Jacob have signed off on.

• In 90 days: The ABM motion is live and targeting the right accounts. Pipeline influenced by marketing is measurable. Sales has content they actually use. The brand has a clearer, stronger voice.

• In 6 months: Marketing is a recognized pipeline driver, not a support function. You've run experiments that worked—and some that didn't—and the learnings are compounding. The content engine is running.

• Long-term: Adapt's brand is known in the insurance infrastructure category. The marketing playbook you wrote is something every future marketing hire studies. You've built something that scales.

This is a career-defining role—and the canvas is blank.

If you're a high-output marketer who wants ownership, creative freedom, and a direct line to revenue at a fast-moving startup—Adapt is where you do it. You'll work directly with the CEO and Head of Sales, build the marketing function from zero, and help put Adapt on the map in one of the most underserved categories in tech.

Let's go build something people can't ignore.