Founding Head of Growth

Founding Head of Growth

Location: Seattle (in-office Monday/Wednesday/Friday, downtown)

Reports to: CEO

Compensation: Highly competitive base salary plus bonus, equity in our company, and equity/portfolio benefits from our strategic backer. We’ll walk you through the full structure in process.

About Us

We’re an AI-native consumer travel company rebuilding travel from first principles, with AI at the core — a proactive, personal companion that knows how you travel and does the work for you. Our mission is making room for what matters most.

We’re a small, senior founding team (currently ~12, growing to ~28 by year-end) heads-down on our first public release, with the backing and distribution reach of one of the world’s largest travel companies behind us.

The role, in one paragraph

This is the seat that builds our go-to-market playbook from scratch. You’ll own how we launch, how we grow, and how travelers discover, adopt, and stay with us — from our initial public launch through the durable, compounding growth engine that follows. You’ll do this as a 0→1 builder on a small team: no existing playbook, and a brand that wins on taste and trust. You’ll be equal parts strategist and operator — setting acquisition, lifecycle, and retention strategy while staying hands-on in the experiments, the copy, the channels, and the numbers. And you’ll turn our strategic partnership into a genuine growth advantage without ever compromising our independence.

What you’ll own

1. The initial public launch

• Own the end-to-end launch strategy that converts our pre-launch waitlist into activated, retained users — sequencing, segmentation, and a phased rollout that protects quality of experience.
• Design the launch narrative and moment in partnership with the founders and brand — PR, earned media, founder-led channels, and the first wave of organic distribution.
• Build the activation funnel from waitlist invite → onboarding → first meaningful product moment → first booking.
• Stand up the measurement and attribution foundation before launch.

2. Acquisition

• Build a diversified acquisition engine across organic, content/SEO/AEO, lifecycle/CRM, paid performance, referral, and partnerships — weighted toward durable, low-CAC channels that fit a premium, trust-led brand.
• Design and ship referral and word-of-mouth loops native to the product.
• Own paid acquisition with discipline: test, measure true incremental CAC and payback, and kill what doesn’t work fast.

3. Lifecycle, retention & engagement

• Own the full lifecycle — onboarding, activation, engagement, resurrection — anchored to travel’s natural cadence.
• Build the proactive, anticipatory messaging system that brings users back at the right moment (price drops, rebooking opportunities, planning nudges) — leaning into our agentic, always-on product surface.
• Drive retention and habit formation as the real growth lever for a low-frequency category.

4. Growth measurement & experimentation

• Build and run the growth experimentation program — hypotheses, prioritization, clean reads, honest post-mortems.
• Be a collaborator to product to prioritize features that nurture the growth flywheel.
• Own the growth metrics that matter: activation, retention curves, cohort LTV, CAC/payback, and PMF benchmarks.
• Be the truth-teller on what’s actually working.

5. Strategic partnership as a growth asset

• Turn our strategic backer relationship into a structural advantage — distribution, data, and reach — while rigorously protecting our independent, unbiased positioning.
• Partner with BD and the founders to unlock co-marketing, cross-portfolio, and distribution opportunities.

Who you are

• 0→1 operator. You’ve built growth from nothing, not optimized a mature funnel. You create structure out of ambiguity and don’t wait for permission.
• Consumer DNA, non-negotiable. Deep consumer product instinct from B2C experience — you know the difference between what users say and what they do, and you’ve grown a consumer product people genuinely love. Travel experience is a strong plus, but not required.
• Full-stack growth leader. Fluent across acquisition, lifecycle, retention, and brand — hands-on in the work, not just managing people who do it.
• Founder-caliber builder. You’ve operated at an early stage before, in the weeds — this isn’t a role for someone stepping out of a large, mature organization to manage a team. Right now, no one here manages a team; everyone is building.
• Quant rigor + intellectual honesty. You live in the data, design clean experiments, and change your mind on evidence.
• AI-native. AI is woven into how you work day to day, and you see how it changes the growth playbook itself.
• Brand taste. You can grow aggressively without cheapening the brand. Trust is the product.
• Excellent written communicator. You think on paper, write crisp strategy, and bring others along.

Nice to have

• Experience launching a consumer product 0→1 (the launch moment itself).
• Background in travel, OTAs, or marketplaces.
• Comfort operating inside or alongside a large strategic partner.

How we work

• Company of founders. Everyone here operates like an owner. High autonomy, high accountability, zero scaffolding.
• Velocity with judgment. We move fast and we choose well.
• Craft matters. The bar is high and we hold it.
• AI-native. AI is in the daily workflow of every role, this one included.
• In-person. We build together in downtown Seattle, in office Monday/Wednesday/Friday.

Rainier Recruiting is an equal opportunity employer and service provider and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, gender identity, national origin, citizenship status, sexual orientation, disability, political affiliation or belief, or any other protected class. We are committed to the principles of Equal Opportunity Employment and are dedicated to making employment decisions based on merit and value, for ourselves, our client companies, and for the candidates we represent. We engage in socially conscious business practices and believe that diverse, equitable, inclusive, and non-biased talent and recruitment processes are foundational to the success of every organization that we partner with.