Founding Head of Growth & Marketing

About Ceno

Ceno is building the neobank for the US-to-Asia corridor: one account where Americans invest in global equities, hold and move USD, KRW, and JPY, and run a financial life that spans two continents.

We're starting with the hardest and most valuable piece: a retail brokerage that gives US investors direct access to Korean and Japanese equities. USD in, USD out, with FX, custody, KYC, and tax reporting handled invisibly by an AI-native, agentic back end. Recent regulatory changes in Korea opened direct market access to overseas brokers for the first time, and we intend to turn that opening into the default way America invests in Asia.

The product promise is true localization: buying any global equity feels exactly like trading the US markets, with the research, filings, and news that local investors trade on translated and delivered in real time by our AI research engine. From there the map expands, market by market, until global equities sit on one shelf, with stablecoin-enabled settlement moving money across the Pacific in minutes instead of days. The AAPI community is our beachhead; US retail is the market.

The content engine behind this is real today. Ceno Research, our wholly owned Korean subsidiary, produces institutional-grade IR translation for Korean public companies, and Ceno News streams that market intelligence out daily, and we already have advisors and creators who can produce. Your job is to run the machine: turn that content into an audience, and that audience into funded accounts. We're seed-stage, on a multi-phase path to our own FINRA-licensed broker-dealer, and building the founding team now.

Why this role exists

The US side of Ceno lives or dies on one thing in the next 12 months: turning a brand-new product category into funded accounts. Funded accounts are the KPI this role is measured on, not downloads or signups. That carries three of the company's hardest deliverables.

• AAPI-first launch. Win funded accounts with Korean-American and Japanese-American retail investors first, the wedge that proves the model, then expand to the broader Asian-American and Pan-Asian diaspora, and later to Gen Z and broader US retail.
• Content and creator engine. Turn Ceno Research and Ceno News output, plus a managed roster of external creators, advisors, and UGC partners, into a repeatable acquisition machine across social, creators, and community, the moat that lowers cost-per-acquisition over time.
• The acquisition funnel. Convert attention into signups into funded, trading accounts at a cost per acquisition the business can scale on.

What You Will Own

• Content pipeline and creative direction. Turn our research on Korean and Japanese stocks into a steady stream of content across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, and Reddit: short videos, threads, explainers, and a newsletter. You direct the pipeline and manage the creators, advisors, and UGC partners who produce it, setting the brief, the voice per platform, and the quality bar. You don't have to make every asset yourself; you have to make the engine run and build real followings on each channel.
• Creator and influencer GTM. Identify, contract, and manage US finance creators, YouTubers, podcasters, advisors, and UGC partners whose audiences fit Ceno, from one-off collabs to long‑term ambassador deals, on a hybrid flat + CPA model. You own creative output from people who don't report to you. Coordinate with our Korea team on Korea‑side creators and channels.
• Performance and acquisition funnel. Own the path from first impression to funded account: paid social, performance marketing, referral programs, community‑led acquisition, launch moments, email and lifecycle campaigns. Set cost‑per‑acquisition targets and hit them.
• The US GTM playbook. Build Ceno's first repeatable US go‑to‑market playbook: the channels, creators, messages, and funnel mechanics that reliably produce funded accounts, documented so the team can run it again as we scale to each new audience.
• Audience sequence. Launch to Korean-American and Japanese-American retail investors first with culturally fluent campaigns (bilingual content, community events, diaspora media), then expand to the broader Asian-American and Pan‑Asian diaspora, and later to Gen Z and broader US retail. Take what works to each next audience.
• Brand and category education. Define Ceno's voice and the canonical, plain‑English explainers for how buying a Korean or Japanese stock through Ceno actually works.
• Compliance‑aware marketing. Work with US counsel to keep everything we publish within FINRA/SEC marketing rules.
• Measurement. Own the analytics; funded accounts are the number that matters: report funded accounts, cost per acquisition, activation, and channel performance to the CEO and board.
• Team build‑out. Hire the first 2 to 3 marketing team members over 12 months, typically a content creator/editor and a growth marketer.

Who We Are Looking For

Must-have

• 5 to 10+ years in growth and content marketing, with strong consumer tech growth experience. You've owned the full content‑to‑acquisition funnel, not just one channel, and understand both creator/content marketing and performance marketing.
• You've built and scaled a growth engine from scratch: an audience, a paid channel, a creator program, or a community you can point to and say "I grew that," with the numbers to back it.
• Strong editorial and creative judgment. You can take something dry (currency conversion, Korean corporate news) and shape it, or direct creators to shape it, into content people actually want to watch and read.
• You live on the platforms. You know what works on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, and Reddit, and you follow the finance creator world closely.
• You've owned paid social and performance marketing budgets and can read the numbers to tell what's working and what to kill.
• You've managed external creators, agencies, advisors, or partners. You know how to brief creative, hold a quality bar, and get output from people who don't report to you.
• Founder mentality: you ship daily, hold quality high, and don't need anyone to hand you a playbook.

Strong nice-to-have

• Korean and/or Japanese language ability, or deep familiarity with Korean-American / Japanese-American communities and media.
• Experience marketing to diaspora or multicultural US audiences.
• Fintech, brokerage, crypto, or investing experience. A plus, but consumer tech growth chops matter more.
• Prior experience launching a product in a brand‑new category.
• Comfort operating under financial marketing rules (FINRA Rule 2210 or equivalent), or a fast learner happy to pick them up.

Not the right fit

• Pure content creators, or brand and comms profiles, who've never owned a growth number. We already have people who can produce; this is build-and‑run‑the‑funnel work.
• Marketers who need a big budget and a full team to function. The first 12 months are hands‑on and scrappy.
• Candidates who lead with "I want to set strategy." The first year is heavy execution across content, creators, and paid.