Founding Marketer

Calico AI; Toronto; On-site; CAD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Calico AI is hiring its first marketing hire to own pipeline from first touch to qualified conversations. You’ll build the strategy, test outbound, content, paid, partnerships, and events for both revenue lines, with freedom to experiment beyond playbooks.

You’ll shape the brand story, own the website and pricing decks, and define the audience of apparel operators. The role requires scrappy, data-driven thinking and the courage to try unconventional ideas that actually generate meetings.

Job description

You'll be our first marketing hire. There's no team to inherit, no playbook, no brand guidelines doc, and no "how we've always done it." There's a product with real customers, two revenue lines (software licenses and production), a social media lead who'll work alongside you, and a market full of product operators who've never been marketed to well.

Your job is to get their attention and turn it into a pipeline, using whatever works. The usual B2B playbook (gated ebooks, generic LinkedIn ads, a webinar nobody attends) won't cut it here. Sourcing managers don't read that stuff. You'll have to find the thing that does.

What we'd love to see you try

These are examples of the kind of thinking we meant:

• A teardown series that gets forwarded in every sourcing group chat.
• A stunt at a trade show that gets people to your booth without a free tote bag.
• A scrappy, useful tool (a cost calculator, a template, a checklist) that operators actually bookmark.
• A cold outbound sequence so specific and human that people reply just to say "how did you know that?"
• A customer story told so well that their competitor calls us.
• Something we haven't thought of. That's the real point of this list.

What you'll own

Pipeline. Outbound, content, paid, partnerships, events. All of it, from first touch to qualified conversation. Test wide, kill fast, and go deep on whatever produces real conversations with apparel brands. Impressions don't count. You'll market both revenue lines, so figure out why a brand buys a license versus placing production with us, and build the offers and funnels for each.

The story. What we're called, how software and production become one coherent pitch, and what problem a brand recognizes as its own within ten seconds of landing on the site. You own the website, the pricing presentation, the sales decks, and the point of view we put into the world. This industry can smell a software marketer who just found a vertical, so sound like someone who gets it.

The audience. Build a following of apparel operators who read us because we're useful, whether or not they're buying. Set the content direction with our social media lead, who owns the daily presence while you own the standard. Turn customers into proof, and show up where sourcing decisions actually get made.

The machine. We run Unify, and we expect you to use AI everywhere: research, enrichment, sequencing, content, analysis. One person with great tooling should do what used to take four. Instrument the funnel, make the data trustworthy, and report honestly by revenue line: what worked, what flopped, what you're killing, what you're doubling down on.

The team. Show us where more capacity creates leverage, and we'll build the function around you.

You're probably our person if...

• You've built something. A campaign, a newsletter, a community, a side project, a growth hack that made money. Big or small, it's yours, and you can tell us what happened and what you'd do differently. Bonus points if it flopped first.
• You've been the whole marketing team, or close to it, with nobody to hand work to. Ideally 5+ years in, but if you've done more with less time, show us.
• You get scrappy when there's no budget. Constraints make you more creative, not less.
• You'd rather own the whole funnel than perfect one slice of it.
• You think in pipeline and payback. You want your name next to a revenue number.
• You write to win. Clear, short, and persuasive.
• You find the bottleneck yourself and argue from data about where the next dollar goes.
• You're competitive and you don't quit. When three channels fail, you try a fourth. When the fourth fails, you try something weird.

Probably not a fit if...

• You want a playbook and a manager to tell you what to run.
• You'd rather go deep on one channel than figure out ten.
• You measure success in reach, not revenue.
• "That's not my job" has ever come out of your mouth.

Category creation experience. An apparel, fashion, retail, or manufacturing background (you know what a tech pack is and why line sheets cause fights). B2B experience selling into an industry that doesn't think of itself as a software buyer. Experience marketing a business where the sale isn't purely self-serve.

Why take this

• You'll own it. First marketing hire, strategy is yours, and the team is likely yours to build.
• The story is untold. The gap between how sourcing works and how it should work is enormous, and almost nobody is telling it well.
• The product is real. Brands are on the platform and production is moving. You're not marketing a promise.
• No layers. Small team, direct line to the founders, and a short distance between what you learn and what we build.