Founding Growth Lead

Zelara; Berlin; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Budget for events and experiments

Direct line to founders

Job summary

Zelara, a Berlin-based AI-native growth startup, is seeking a Founding Growth Lead to build the growth function and own the top of the funnel. You will define the strategy, channels, budgets and execution to generate qualified leads that excite sales.

Location: Berlin, hybrid with regular travel across Europe. You will hire and lead a small growth team within the first year and report to the Co-Founder, shaping the GTM narrative and helping scale Zelara’s enterprise-ready messaging.

Qualifications

• Deep CRM and lifecycle marketing knowledge.
• Proven ability to generate qualified enterprise pipeline.
• End-to-end events and webinars experience.
• Proficient in AI-driven marketing workflows.
• Strong copywriting and messaging skills.

Responsibilities

• Own events and host executive dinners/roundtables.
• Run webinars series with customers and partners.
• Lead campaigns reaching enterprise marketing leaders.
• Shape messaging and GTM strategy.
• Build AI-native growth workflows.
• Own qualification criteria with sales and budget allocation.

Skills

CRM

Lifecycle marketing

Data analytics

Events management

Copywriting

Growth strategy

AI tooling

Tools

HubSpot

Salesforce

Apollo

Job description

Why Zelara, why now

Lifecycle marketing still runs on static campaigns and broad segments. Zelara replaces that with an AI-native system that learns from every customer interaction and decides the next best message for each individual.

Well-known brands in fintech, travel, e-commerce, B2B2C and D2C already run Zelara in production, inbound interest is growing, and we're backed by NAP. Now we need the person who turns that interest into a repeatable pipeline engine.

The role

As our Founding Growth Lead, you'll establish Zelara's growth function and own the top of the funnel. One number matters most: qualified leads that sales is excited to talk to.

There's no playbook to inherit. You pick the channels, spend the budget and ship the work yourself, with the founders and the other GTM leaders. You'll build the function AI-native from day one, and within your first year you'll hire and lead a small team.

Reports to: Co-Founder

Location: Berlin, hybrid, with regular travel across Europe for conferences and our own events

What you'll own

• Events. Represent Zelara at leading European marketing conferences and host our own executive dinners, roundtables and meetups. Every event ends in meetings.
• Webinars. A series with customers, partners and industry voices, repurposed into content that keeps producing leads.
• Campaigns. Awareness and product marketing campaigns that reach lifecycle, CRM and marketing leaders at enterprise companies, and turn launches and customer wins into case studies and sales enablement.
• Messaging and GTM strategy. Shape how we tell our story and refine our GTM strategy with the other GTM leaders.
• Zelara on Zelara. Run our own nurture and lifecycle programs on our product, as our marketer and most demanding user.
• An AI-native growth function. Build research, content, personalization and reporting workflows around AI, so a small team ships like a much larger one.
• The numbers. Own the qualified-lead definition with sales, attribution and experiments, and move budget to what works.

How you'll know you're winning

Qualified upper-funnel leads are your north star.

• Qualified leads per month (north star): Leads that meet the criteria agreed with sales
• Lead-to-meeting conversion: Whether sales can work them
• Cost per qualified lead, by program: What's worth scaling
• Pipeline sourced by marketing: How your work turns into revenue

First 30 days: qualified-lead definition agreed with sales in the first two weeks, tracking live, first webinar and awareness campaign shipped, first qualified leads handed to sales.

First 60 days: first Zelara event hosted, next major conference locked in, second webinar and a product marketing campaign shipped, 6-month plan and team hiring plan presented, a steady weekly flow of qualified leads.

After 12 months: a predictable lead engine, a clear view of which programs drive it, and a small team you've hired and lead.

You might be the one if

• You know CRM and lifecycle marketing deeply (journeys, segmentation, triggers, customer data) and can talk shop with the CRM and lifecycle leaders we sell to.
• You've generated a qualified pipeline with enterprise buyers and can show the numbers. Typically 5+ years in B2B growth, demand gen or field marketing, but results matter more than years.
• You've run events and webinars end to end, and you write your own copy.
• You work AI-first: you use AI tools daily for research, content and workflow automation, and can show what you've built.
• You understand how AI is changing marketing organizations, from team shape and roles to how work gets done, and want to build that way.
• You're comfortable with data, and you'd rather build than inherit.

Bonus points: experience at an early-stage startup in its first enterprise growth phase; HubSpot or Salesforce and Apollo; German and a DACH marketing network.

What you get

• Ownership of the growth engine at a company with real enterprise customers, and the credit for building it.
• A direct line to the founders and a real voice in GTM strategy.
• A budget for events, tools and experiments, and the freedom to spend it.
• A team to lead within your first year, and a path to Head of Growth.

Our Compass

We are guided by four core values:

• Seek Truth: We ground decisions in evidence. When the facts change, we change our mind.
• Act with Integrity: We build trust through transparency, reliability, and ownership.
• Put Customers First: We succeed only when they succeed.