Founding GTM Operator

Founding go-to-market role at a fast growing venture-backed B2B AI startup. Own our growth engine end-to-end.

Position: Founding GTM Operator (Full-Time)

Reporting to: CEO

Location: San Francisco (4 days/week in person)

Compensation: $90000-$110000 base salary plus your choice of equity or a bonus linked to company revenue (bonus expected to be $10000 for this role).

Lenders spend over $24B every year hiring agents to perform manual repetitive servicing work. Existing AI solutions try to automate this but they treat regulatory guardrails as an afterthought - meaning they cant guarantee compliance and cant be trusted with critical servicing workflows.

Kato takes a different approach.

Regulations arent an afterthought - theyre the foundation. We start with a regulatory rules system and layer an AI decision engine on top. With this architecture were building an AI-powered servicing platform that automates critical workflows across every channel with full compliance and best-in-class recoveries.

We are starting today with a compliance first Voice AI agent that handles outbound and inbound loan servicing calls. We have grown ARR 6x this year and are already in production with major names in the fintech lending space like Bilt Rewards Bluevine and Parafin.

Kato is founded by a team with deep operating expertise in financial services and software engineering:

• Pratik Risbud (CEO/Co-Founder): Former Investment Banker at Goldman Sachs and led Credit/Operations at Brex

• David Zhu (CTO/Co-Founder): Former Software Engineer at Google and Engineering Manager at Brex

Kato is backed by institutional capital from Pear VC and angel investors from top tech companies such as Brex Bridge and Square.

We already know how to find and close customers. We are now hiring our Founding GTM Operator: a generalist who owns demand generation and turns our go-to-market into a repeatable growth engine. This is one of the most critical hires at Kato and youll work directly with the CEO.

On the outbound and conference side that means getting sharper and more sophisticated about how we find customers - tracking the right buying signals testing new plays and expanding our conference presence.

And on the brand side its wide open. We want to turn Kato into a household name in the lending space. Youll own building our presence from scratch: events webinars LinkedIn posts newsletters blogs. When someone in this industry thinks about AI for servicing & collections we want them to think of Kato first.

Across both we dont just want someone who can run the motion - we want someone who builds the system behind it using AI and automation to take out as much manual work as possible.

This role is a fit if you have 1-3 years of experience and:

• You are a former founder or owned GTM / growth at an early-stage startup

• You have done either sales development (SDR/BDR) or demand-focused marketing (MDR field or event marketing) - a role where you were measured on pipeline/revenue.

This role is not a fit if:

• If your background is analytics / data focused without direct exposure to revenue

• If your background is pure brand or content marketing measured on reach and impressions

• Build and maintain a comprehensive database of the lending market

• Own end-to-end outbound: research list building copy multi-channel outreach (email LinkedIn) message refining

• Create and manage nurture campaigns for older or dormant leads

• Run Katos conference efforts (e.g. outreach marketing campaigns booths)

• Systematize relentlessly - automate list building signal tracking personalization and sequencing wherever you can with AI and other tooling

• Define Katos content strategy by creating blog posts newsletters and other top-of-funnel materials

• Launch Katos marketing efforts - e.g. webinars in person events

• Systematize relentlessly - automate research and content drafting wherever you can with AI and other tooling

• Build custom collateral for prospect meetings and keep Katos core materials current

• Own GTM reporting - define what we measure (e.g. outbound conversion rates pipeline velocity meeting-to-opportunity conversion) and act on them

We covered who this role is a fit for above. Beyond that you:

• Have 1-3 years of full-time work experience and a Bachelors degree in Business or related field

• Are a structured thinker who questions assumptions and reasons independently rather than taking things at face value

• Are coachable and quick to act on feedback

• Have exceptional written communication

• Are comfortable operating with high agency and driving independent progress toward company goals

• Have strong attention to detail organization and follow-through

• Are AI-native and automation-minded with a track record of using AI tools to remove manual work

• Are proficient with common business tools such as Google Workspace (e.g. Google Docs Google Sheets) and Slack. Experience with CRM systems like Hubspot preferred

• Work with founders that have built and scaled financial products for 9 years

• Own real scope from day one - youll own core parts of our revenue engine and see your work hit customers fast.

• Work hard on things that matter. This wont be a 9-to-5 but we dont believe in busy work. We work hard on the problems that actually move the business and dont waste your time on the ones that dont.

• Get unmatched career acceleration: youll learn sales GTM strategy and startup execution at a depth few roles offer.

Required Experience:

IC