Founding GTM Lead

Most AI tools today are brilliant temp contractors: they show up, do a task, and disappear. They don't attend standups. They don't remember last week's decision. They don't know why the team pivoted on the architecture three months ago. Kinelo changes that. Think of Kinelo as the management layer for the new type of Hybrid Team: humans and AI coworkers working together.

We use Kinelo to build Kinelo. Our AI coworkers participate in the actual work of building the product, pulling context from across the organization, helping analyze what's working and what isn't, contributing to roadmap decisions, and improving the system's own implementation at both the engineering and business level. We're starting to see what it looks like when your own product becomes an unfair advantage in building and running the company. We believe that's an opportunity.

We're a small, seed-stage company with an office in San Francisco. We have engineers. We have a product. We don't have customers yet. We're looking for the person who changes that.

The role

There is no playbook for this business. The market is different than it was a year ago and will be different again in a year. We are operating in a new product category against well-funded competition, in a landscape where traditional distribution, paid marketing, content plays, have become more crowded and less effective. We need someone who can invent the new playbook.

You will report directly to the CEO, not as a delegate executing a plan, but as a thought partner helping crack the go-to-market strategy in a fast-moving, competitive, and genuinely unprecedented market. You think strategically, but this is absolutely a hands-on role, and you expect to move mountains.

We firmly believe that product, engineering, and go-to-market are synergistic. Your job is not just to take what the engineering team builds and figure out how to sell it. You need to spot opportunities. Think about creative go-to-market strategies. Then come back to the product team and say "here's what we should build to make this possible." You need to see angles no one else is taking advantage of.

On a given day or week, you might:

• Run a demo for a CPO who's been struggling to get organizational context into their AI coding agents, then write the follow-up that turns the conversation into a design partnership
• Steward an open-source community that's forming around our public benchmark, responding to GitHub issues and shaping the narrative about what organizational memory for AI should look like
• Write a blog post that articulates a problem most companies feel but haven't named yet, something that makes a VP of Engineering forward it to their team with "this is exactly what I've been trying to say"
• Sit in on a user research call and notice that one persona is more excited than another, then rewrite our outreach strategy based on that insight
• Prepare materials for a 15-person dinner in SF where engineering leaders and product leaders are debating how AI changes the way teams coordinate
• Listen to what a design partner is telling you about their workflow, realize it has implications for our product roadmap, and bring that back to the team with clarity and conviction

We're looking for someone who:

• Has pirate-like tendencies. You've taken a minuscule budget and had a massive impact that far exceeded expectations. You see angles other people miss. You know when to be scrappy and when to make a big bet instead of optimizing around the edges.
• Is a salesperson at their core. You can read the people you talk to, hear their needs, sense their objections, and close. But you also think at scale: not just one deal at a time, but how to make a massive group of people and organizations demand what you're building.
• Writes in a way that changes how people think about a problem. This is non-negotiable.
• Has enough technical literacy to hold a conversation with engineers about system architecture, APIs, and the AI agent ecosystem without losing credibility.
• Has an instinct for why organizations break down and what makes teams work well together. You probably have opinions about this that you can articulate without preparation.

You might be a former founder who knocked down every wall between you and your market. You might be someone who was an insurgent for change inside a large organization, getting more done than the stagnant leadership thought was possible. You might come from sales but be driven by the thrill of cracking a new market, not by hitting quota. This role is not for you if you need to be told what to do.

This generally translates to:

• 4-8+ years of professional experience where you were the person who figured things out, not the person who executed a playbook someone else wrote
• Experience at a company under 50 people, or a demonstrated ability to thrive without structure
• Familiarity with the AI landscape; enough context to understand why organizational memory for AI agents matters and where the market is heading

Kinelo is for you if:

• You maintain high standards while being collaborative and compassionate
• You enjoy tackling ambiguous, high-leverage problems
• You think in terms of leverage and impact (“80% value with 20% effort”)
• You view failures as learning accelerants

You won’t be happy at Kinelo if:

• You need to see a playbook before you can start running
• You bring ego instead of curiosity and ownership
• You’re uncomfortable competing in a fast-moving, high-expectation environment
• You're uncomfortable with a company that might pivot its positioning based on what you learn in the market

Logistics & Benefits:

• You'll be the first non-engineering hire, joining a handful of talented engineers with a direct line to the CEO.
• Competitive salary with meaningful early-stage equity
• Full benefits (health, vision, dental, 401k, parental leave)
• This position is in person in San Francisco at our office at 2nd and Mission. Some WHF and remote are okay.

To apply:

Send us your resume and tell us about a time you got an outsized result by doing something no one else saw coming, or that no one thought would work. Or, tell us what you'd do in your first 30 days.