Founding Growth Marketing

Starboard; Toronto; On-site; CAD 75,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Garuda Ventures is looking for a Founding Growth Marketer in Toronto. You will establish brand identity, drive lead generation, and manage SEO strategies, while collaborating directly with the founder.

This role demands strong skills in growth marketing, content strategies, and an ability to navigate ambiguity and drive results. With opportunities to build the marketing function from scratch, it's a chance to impact the company profoundly.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in growth or demand-gen marketing, ideally at a B2B SaaS startup.
• Experience building brand and running performance marketing.
• Demonstrated SEO and content results with measurable impact.

Responsibilities

• Establish Starboard's online presence and brand identity.
• Plan and execute marketing strategies for events.
• Build and maintain an effective SEO strategy.

Skills

Growth marketing experience

SEO expertise

Content marketing

Event planning

Lead generation

Brand establishment

Job description

Founding Growth Marketer

Team: Marketing & Growth · Location: Toronto/ NYC [in office 4 days a week] · Type: Full-time

About Starboard

Starboard is an AI-native quoting and operations platform for freight forwarders. Forwarding still runs on inboxes, spreadsheets, and tribal knowledge — pricing teams spend their days copy‑pasting rates and chasing carriers instead of winning business. We're changing that with AI agents that quote, source, and operate at machine speed, starting with the quoting workflow and expanding across the forwarder's entire back office.

We're backed by Eclipse Ventures and Garuda Ventures, headquartered in Toronto with a US presence, and growing fast inside a global industry that's barely been touched by modern software. Our long‑term vision runs from AI quoting to freight aggregation to end‑to‑end AI operations — an interconnected agent network for SMB global trade.

The Role

This is our first dedicated growth and marketing hire. You'll own how the market discovers, understands, and trusts Starboard — from a near‑blank brand canvas to a repeatable demand engine. You'll establish our voice online, turn the freight conference circuit into pipeline, build SEO from the ground up, and stand up the self‑serve lead‑gen motion behind Starboard Light, our lighter, faster on‑ramp into the product.

You'll work directly with the founder and the commercial team, and you'll have unusual latitude: define the playbook, pick the tools, and build the function. This role suits a builder who's equally comfortable writing a landing page, running a booth, debugging an attribution model, and arguing about positioning.

What You'll Own

Brand & online presence

• Establish Starboard's brand, voice, and visual identity across web, LinkedIn, and the channels where forwarders actually pay attention.
• Build and own the website and content engine — positioning, messaging, case studies, and thought leadership that make us the obvious choice in a category most people didn't know existed.
• Grow our share of voice in the freight and logistics‑tech conversation.

Event marketing

• Plan and run Starboard's presence at industry events and conferences (think GLA, JCtrans, and the regional forwarding networks), turning expensive booths and travel into measurable pipeline.
• Own pre‑event outreach, on‑site capture, and post‑event follow‑up in tight coordination with sales and SDRs.
• Build a repeatable event playbook: which shows to attend, what to spend, and how to measure return.

SEO & inbound

• Build SEO from zero — technical foundation, keyword and topic strategy, and a content roadmap that compounds.
• Grow organic traffic into a reliable, low‑cost top‑of‑funnel channel that ranks for the terms forwarders search when they're ready to buy.

Lead generation — Starboard Light

• Design and run the demand‑gen and self‑serve acquisition motion for Starboard Light: paid, organic, lifecycle, and conversion‑rate optimization across the funnel.
• Instrument the funnel end to end — sign‑ups, activation, and conversion — and report on CAC, pipeline, and what's actually working.
• Partner with product and sales to turn Light users into qualified opportunities for the core platform.

What You Bring

• 4+ years in growth or demand‑gen marketing, ideally at a B2B SaaS startup, with at least one stint as an early or founding marketer.
• Full‑funnel range: you've built brand and run performance, and you can move between strategy and hands‑on execution without losing momentum.
• Demonstrated SEO and content results — you can point to traffic and pipeline you've grown, not just posts you've published.
• Strong commercial instinct: you think in pipeline and CAC, and you partner naturally with sales.
• Comfort with ambiguity and a bias to ship. You don't need a big team or a finished brand book to start; you build them.
• Sharp writing and a good eye for design and craft.

Bonus Points

• Experience marketing to a non‑tech, operationally complex buyer (logistics, supply chain, fintech, insurtech, or similar).
• Familiarity with product‑led growth and self‑serve funnels.
• Background in freight, logistics, or trade — or genuine curiosity about a massive industry hiding in plain sight.
• Experience standing up a marketing tech and attribution stack from scratch.

What Success Looks Like

• First 90 days: brand foundation and refreshed site live; SEO baseline and roadmap in place; an event playbook ready for the next show on the calendar; Starboard Light funnel instrumented end to end.
• First year: organic search is a reliable, growing source of qualified pipeline; events convert predictably; and Starboard Light is generating a steady flow of self‑serve sign‑ups feeding the commercial team.

Why Starboard

You’ll be the person who defines how an entire category meets its first real AI‑native product — with the autonomy of a founding hire, direct access to the founder, and the backing to do it properly. If you want to build a marketing function rather than inherit one, this is that seat.

Compensation: competitive salary plus meaningful early‑stage equity. [Insert range.]

Starboard is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds.