Marketing Lead

Drumbeat is an AI-native PR and communications platform for high-growth companies. Customers use Drumbeat to build credible narratives, match stories to journalists, run campaigns, and track coverage, keeping their brand consistently in front of the right audience.

We're pre‑seed, two months post‑launch, with early customers and real revenue. Built inside New & Improved, the Auckland venture studio behind Tracksuit, Ideally and Aether. Three cofounders in place, an early team shipping, and a product in market.

This is our first dedicated marketing hire.

You’ll own how the market discovers, understands and engages with Drumbeat, across brand, growth, content, partnerships, and community. You’ll partner closely with the cofounders on commercial outcomes and the broader Drumbeat narrative. The marketing bar at Drumbeat will be the bar you set.

We’re hiring someone who’s as comfortable shaping the strategy as they are running the campaign. No layer between you and the work.

Shape and evolve Drumbeat’s brand, positioning, and market narrative, and keep it consistent everywhere customers meet us.

Drive awareness, inbound demand and pipeline through multi‑channel campaigns across paid, organic, partnerships, PR (yes, our own), events and community.

Lead content end‑to‑end: social, campaigns, founder storytelling, customer stories, thought leadership.

Build the partnership and community presence, agencies, founder networks, ecosystem events, IRL activations.

Use AI tooling as default infrastructure for research, content, campaign ops and measurement.

Own the website, lifecycle marketing, analytics and the operating rhythm that keeps the whole engine running.

Work directly with customers to understand what’s resonating and what isn’t, and let that shape the next campaign.

Senior individual contributor experience across brand and growth, with at least one zero‑to‑one marketing function you’ve built or led.

A strong point of view on how AI changes modern marketing, and daily fluency with the tools that make that real.

A working understanding of PR, earned media, or comms enough to market a PR platform credibly to people who do this for a living.

Commercial instincts. You think in pipeline and brand at the same time and don’t see them as separate problems.

Strong creative judgement and the willingness to make a call when there isn’t a clear answer.

Comfort with ambiguity and a bias to ship, even when the brief isn’t fully formed.

Strong customer focus, you want to be in front of users, not shielded from them.

No job is too small. You don’t play to the edges of your role, if supplies need unpacking or the office needs sorting, you’re in, same as when the brand strategy needs solving.

You’re comfortable being a face for Drumbeat, local events, panels, podcasts, the occasional blog post. You see it as part of the job, not a distraction from it.

A respected voice in your craft. Other marketers want to learn from you, and you’ve built the reputation that earns it through the work.

Prior founding marketer or first‑marketing‑hire experience at a high‑growth startup.

B2B SaaS, marketing tech, or media tech background.

Direct experience in or adjacent to the PR, comms or earned‑media industry.

Experience scaling a brand from pre‑seed through Series A.

Tech environment: modern marketing stack with a heavy AI/LLM layer. We bias toward shipping fast, using AI tooling as default, and choosing tools that let a small team punch well above its weight. You’ll have meaningful input on the stack as it evolves.

High‑ownership IC role with direct customer contact and short feedback loops.

Studio backing and operator network from New & Improved (Tracksuit, Ideally, Aether).

Equity in a pre‑seed company with real customers and real revenue.

This is the most important marketing hire we’ll make this year, and we’re moving on it now. We hire for what you can build, not where you’ve built it, so if this caught your eye, we’d love to hear from you.

Tell us about yourself — we read every application.