Chief Growth Officer
nSpire AI, Davis, CA, United States
We're launching Vera — an AI recruiting agent that replaces an entire talent function for high-growth companies — in public, the way the best Bay Area AI companies do it. We need someone embedded in the founder community, fluent in fast-cycle GTM, and hungry to build the momentum that funds a Series A.
Location
Stage
Role type
Founding team, full-time
Reports to
01 / The Opportunity
Chief Growth Officer
We're launching Vera — an AI recruiting agent that replaces an entire talent function for high-growth companies — in public, the way the best Bay Area AI companies do it. We need someone embedded in the founder community, fluent in fast-cycle GTM, and hungry to build the momentum that funds a Series A.
Location
Menlo Park, CA
Stage
Pre‑seed → Seed / Series A
Role type
Founding team, full-time
Reports to
CEO (Sumanta Chakraborty)
01 / The Opportunity
This is not a marketing job. Every high-growth company between Series A and Series C faces the same impossible situation: they need to hire fast and hire well, but they can't afford a full recruiting team, and the founder is doing five other things while slots go unfilled. They're losing candidates to slower processes, making gut‑feel hires they regret, and treating recruiting as a cost center when it's actually their biggest growth constraint.
Vera solves that completely. She's not a tool that assists a recruiting team — for companies that don't have one yet, she is the recruiting team.
Head of Talent, sourcer, interviewer, coordinator, candidate experience — all of it, from day one, at a fraction of the cost of a single full-time hire. And for companies that do have a TA team, Vera makes them 10x more effective without replacing anyone.
We're launching Vera in public, into the high-growth startup community first — fast sales cycles, word-of-mouth in tight-knit founder networks, and a proof engine that builds the momentum story for our Series A. We have active enterprise conversations already in motion. But the velocity, the brand, and the funding narrative will be built in the growth-stage market first.
The CGO we hire today owns that launch — and co-owns the company that follows it. If you've taken a product from zero to the point where a community couldn't imagine operating without it, and you want to do it again in one of the most consequential AI categories being built right now — this is the role.
02 / Who You Are
The profile we’re looking for. ️
You've done 0→1 before
You have a track record of taking a product nobody knew and making it one people talk about. You know that 0→1 growth looks nothing like 10→100, and you've lived both.
You are genuinely AI-native
Not "I use ChatGPT." You understand AI agents, what makes them different from automation, and how to position them to founders who are simultaneously excited and skeptical. You follow the space closely.
️
You build in public naturally
LinkedIn and X are not chores for you — they're your natural medium. You know how to turn a product milestone, a customer story, or a spicy take into content that compounds across a founder community.
You are embedded in the founder ecosystem
Demo nights, founder dinners, VC events, accelerator communities — you're already in these rooms. You know the people building Series A and B companies in the Bay, and they know you. This network is your primary GTM asset.
⚡
You thrive in fast-cycle selling
You understand that a Head of People at a 50-person startup can say yes in a week if the product is right and the trust is there. You know how to create that trust quickly, close fast, and turn a customer into an evangelist.
You have a "will do anything" attitude
At this stage, the CGO writes copy, shows up to events, DMs founders, gets on podcasts, runs experiments, and ships. You don't wait for a team to delegate to — you build the team around your own output.
03 / What You'll Own
Your mandate from day one. Own the Vera launch into the high-growth startup market — define the positioning, the channels, the narrative, and the community strategy. You are the architect of how Vera becomes the product every scaling founder recommends to other scaling founders. Build and run our building-in-public engine across LinkedIn, X, Bay Area events, accelerator networks, and founder communities. The goal is category ownership in the growth-stage segment — not impressions, not followers, but pipeline and word-of-mouth.
Drive direct pipeline from the founder and operator ecosystem — through in-person relationships, warm intros, community presence, and content that converts. You know how to turn a conversation at a demo night into a signed pilot.
Own the customer momentum story for our Series A raise — logos, use cases, growth metrics, and the narrative arc that shows investors we've found product-market fit in a market that moves fast and talks to itself.
Partner with the CEO on all external content and founder-facing communications — ghostwriting, co-creating, and amplifying the building-in-public narrative that is our most powerful distribution channel at this stage.
Cultivate relationships with VC associates and partners at seed and Series A funds — so that when a portfolio company needs a recruiting solution, Vera is the first call they recommend.
Build the systems, playbooks, and early team that scale growth beyond what you can do alone. You're not just the first growth hire — you're building the function.
04 / What This Is Not
Be honest with yourself here. A brand manager who approves creative and schedules posts in a tool
A demand gen manager who runs paid campaigns and reports on CPA
VP Marketing from a Series B+ company who needs a team of 8 to function
Someone comfortable only with long enterprise sales cycles — 12-month deals are not the primary motion here
Someone who has "used AI tools" but doesn't understand what AI agents are or why a founder should care
A person who isn't already in the Bay Area founder and operator community — the network is the job at this stage
Someone looking for a defined playbook to execute — we're writing the playbook together, in public
05 / Why This Moment
What makes this rare. There are a handful of moments in any category's history where being early means something permanent. The person who defined growth at Figma, at Notion, at Rippling — their playbook became the category's playbook. This is that moment for AI-native recruiting.
You’ll be interviewed by Vera first
Before you speak with Sumanta, Vera will conduct your first screening interview. If that excites you — genuinely excites you — that's your first signal this is the right role. If it makes you uncomfortable, that's a signal too.
Your name is in the founding story
We're building in public from day one. The person who joins now isn't employee #12 — they're a character in the narrative that gets told when this company raises, scales, and exits. That story is being written right now.
️
You define the category playbook
There is no established GTM motion for an AI recruiting agent in the growth-stage market. You're not inheriting a playbook — you're writing the one that gets referenced when this category matures.
️
You eat your own cooking
Vera will run hiring for nSpire. The product you're selling is the product your team uses. When you tell a founder what Vera can do, you're speaking from daily personal experience — not a demo script.
The enterprise relationships are already live
Active conversations with global enterprise accounts are already in motion. The growth-stage market builds momentum and brand. The enterprise pipeline adds credibility and scale. You inherit both tracks from day one.
Your personal brand grows with the company
Building in public means your work is visible. The growth motion you build will be attributed to you — in content, in the community, and in the Series A story. This role makes your career, not just the company's.
06 / Non-Negotiables
The hard requirements.
✓ Demonstrable track record of 0→1 growth at an early-stage company — you can name the product, the results, and what you personally did to get there ✓
✓ Deep AI fluency — you actively follow AI agent development, can articulate what makes Vera different from a chatbot, and can hold a credible conversation with a technical founder about where the space is heading ✓
✓ Existing presence in the Bay Area startup and founder ecosystem — accelerators, VC networks, founder communities, operator circles. This is not something we can build from scratch with you. ✓
✓ Active, compelling presence on LinkedIn and/or X — we will look at your profile and your content before we talk ✓
✓ Bay Area based or ready to be — in-person community presence is core to the role, not optional ✓
Willing to operate on below-market cash with meaningful founding-team equity and a structured catch-up at Series A
07 / Compensation
What's on the table. Cash Salary
Below-market at launch; meaningful increase at Series A close
Equity
Founding-team terms — discussed at offer stage
Title
Chief Growth Officer — or Co-Founder & CGO for the right person
Series A Catch-Up
Structured comp reset tied to close — not vague, written into offer
What you're really signing up for
Being the growth architect of a category-defining AI product — with the equity and founding credit to match
08 / Apply
How this works. Before you speak with Sumanta, you'll have your first conversation with Vera — the product you'll be helping launch. She'll run a real screening interview: no scripts, no keyword matching, just an adaptive conversation about who you are and what you've built. If that prospect makes you lean forward rather than lean back, you're already the right kind of person for this role.
How to apply
Send a short note to sumanta@nspire.ai — not a resume. Tell me about one thing you built from zero: what the problem was, what you did, and what happened. That's the conversation starter. Vera takes it from there.
sumanta@nspire.ai
nspire.ai
Referrals are deeply appreciated. If you know someone who fits this precisely — the 0→1 track record, the AI fluency, the founder community roots — please send them this page. The best candidates for this role are probably not actively looking.
#J-18808-Ljbffr
Location
Stage
Role type
Founding team, full-time
Reports to
01 / The Opportunity
Chief Growth Officer
We're launching Vera — an AI recruiting agent that replaces an entire talent function for high-growth companies — in public, the way the best Bay Area AI companies do it. We need someone embedded in the founder community, fluent in fast-cycle GTM, and hungry to build the momentum that funds a Series A.
Location
Menlo Park, CA
Stage
Pre‑seed → Seed / Series A
Role type
Founding team, full-time
Reports to
CEO (Sumanta Chakraborty)
01 / The Opportunity
This is not a marketing job. Every high-growth company between Series A and Series C faces the same impossible situation: they need to hire fast and hire well, but they can't afford a full recruiting team, and the founder is doing five other things while slots go unfilled. They're losing candidates to slower processes, making gut‑feel hires they regret, and treating recruiting as a cost center when it's actually their biggest growth constraint.
Vera solves that completely. She's not a tool that assists a recruiting team — for companies that don't have one yet, she is the recruiting team.
Head of Talent, sourcer, interviewer, coordinator, candidate experience — all of it, from day one, at a fraction of the cost of a single full-time hire. And for companies that do have a TA team, Vera makes them 10x more effective without replacing anyone.
We're launching Vera in public, into the high-growth startup community first — fast sales cycles, word-of-mouth in tight-knit founder networks, and a proof engine that builds the momentum story for our Series A. We have active enterprise conversations already in motion. But the velocity, the brand, and the funding narrative will be built in the growth-stage market first.
The CGO we hire today owns that launch — and co-owns the company that follows it. If you've taken a product from zero to the point where a community couldn't imagine operating without it, and you want to do it again in one of the most consequential AI categories being built right now — this is the role.
02 / Who You Are
The profile we’re looking for. ️
You've done 0→1 before
You have a track record of taking a product nobody knew and making it one people talk about. You know that 0→1 growth looks nothing like 10→100, and you've lived both.
You are genuinely AI-native
Not "I use ChatGPT." You understand AI agents, what makes them different from automation, and how to position them to founders who are simultaneously excited and skeptical. You follow the space closely.
️
You build in public naturally
LinkedIn and X are not chores for you — they're your natural medium. You know how to turn a product milestone, a customer story, or a spicy take into content that compounds across a founder community.
You are embedded in the founder ecosystem
Demo nights, founder dinners, VC events, accelerator communities — you're already in these rooms. You know the people building Series A and B companies in the Bay, and they know you. This network is your primary GTM asset.
⚡
You thrive in fast-cycle selling
You understand that a Head of People at a 50-person startup can say yes in a week if the product is right and the trust is there. You know how to create that trust quickly, close fast, and turn a customer into an evangelist.
You have a "will do anything" attitude
At this stage, the CGO writes copy, shows up to events, DMs founders, gets on podcasts, runs experiments, and ships. You don't wait for a team to delegate to — you build the team around your own output.
03 / What You'll Own
Your mandate from day one. Own the Vera launch into the high-growth startup market — define the positioning, the channels, the narrative, and the community strategy. You are the architect of how Vera becomes the product every scaling founder recommends to other scaling founders. Build and run our building-in-public engine across LinkedIn, X, Bay Area events, accelerator networks, and founder communities. The goal is category ownership in the growth-stage segment — not impressions, not followers, but pipeline and word-of-mouth.
Drive direct pipeline from the founder and operator ecosystem — through in-person relationships, warm intros, community presence, and content that converts. You know how to turn a conversation at a demo night into a signed pilot.
Own the customer momentum story for our Series A raise — logos, use cases, growth metrics, and the narrative arc that shows investors we've found product-market fit in a market that moves fast and talks to itself.
Partner with the CEO on all external content and founder-facing communications — ghostwriting, co-creating, and amplifying the building-in-public narrative that is our most powerful distribution channel at this stage.
Cultivate relationships with VC associates and partners at seed and Series A funds — so that when a portfolio company needs a recruiting solution, Vera is the first call they recommend.
Build the systems, playbooks, and early team that scale growth beyond what you can do alone. You're not just the first growth hire — you're building the function.
04 / What This Is Not
Be honest with yourself here. A brand manager who approves creative and schedules posts in a tool
A demand gen manager who runs paid campaigns and reports on CPA
VP Marketing from a Series B+ company who needs a team of 8 to function
Someone comfortable only with long enterprise sales cycles — 12-month deals are not the primary motion here
Someone who has "used AI tools" but doesn't understand what AI agents are or why a founder should care
A person who isn't already in the Bay Area founder and operator community — the network is the job at this stage
Someone looking for a defined playbook to execute — we're writing the playbook together, in public
05 / Why This Moment
What makes this rare. There are a handful of moments in any category's history where being early means something permanent. The person who defined growth at Figma, at Notion, at Rippling — their playbook became the category's playbook. This is that moment for AI-native recruiting.
You’ll be interviewed by Vera first
Before you speak with Sumanta, Vera will conduct your first screening interview. If that excites you — genuinely excites you — that's your first signal this is the right role. If it makes you uncomfortable, that's a signal too.
Your name is in the founding story
We're building in public from day one. The person who joins now isn't employee #12 — they're a character in the narrative that gets told when this company raises, scales, and exits. That story is being written right now.
️
You define the category playbook
There is no established GTM motion for an AI recruiting agent in the growth-stage market. You're not inheriting a playbook — you're writing the one that gets referenced when this category matures.
️
You eat your own cooking
Vera will run hiring for nSpire. The product you're selling is the product your team uses. When you tell a founder what Vera can do, you're speaking from daily personal experience — not a demo script.
The enterprise relationships are already live
Active conversations with global enterprise accounts are already in motion. The growth-stage market builds momentum and brand. The enterprise pipeline adds credibility and scale. You inherit both tracks from day one.
Your personal brand grows with the company
Building in public means your work is visible. The growth motion you build will be attributed to you — in content, in the community, and in the Series A story. This role makes your career, not just the company's.
06 / Non-Negotiables
The hard requirements.
✓ Demonstrable track record of 0→1 growth at an early-stage company — you can name the product, the results, and what you personally did to get there ✓
✓ Deep AI fluency — you actively follow AI agent development, can articulate what makes Vera different from a chatbot, and can hold a credible conversation with a technical founder about where the space is heading ✓
✓ Existing presence in the Bay Area startup and founder ecosystem — accelerators, VC networks, founder communities, operator circles. This is not something we can build from scratch with you. ✓
✓ Active, compelling presence on LinkedIn and/or X — we will look at your profile and your content before we talk ✓
✓ Bay Area based or ready to be — in-person community presence is core to the role, not optional ✓
Willing to operate on below-market cash with meaningful founding-team equity and a structured catch-up at Series A
07 / Compensation
What's on the table. Cash Salary
Below-market at launch; meaningful increase at Series A close
Equity
Founding-team terms — discussed at offer stage
Title
Chief Growth Officer — or Co-Founder & CGO for the right person
Series A Catch-Up
Structured comp reset tied to close — not vague, written into offer
What you're really signing up for
Being the growth architect of a category-defining AI product — with the equity and founding credit to match
08 / Apply
How this works. Before you speak with Sumanta, you'll have your first conversation with Vera — the product you'll be helping launch. She'll run a real screening interview: no scripts, no keyword matching, just an adaptive conversation about who you are and what you've built. If that prospect makes you lean forward rather than lean back, you're already the right kind of person for this role.
How to apply
Send a short note to sumanta@nspire.ai — not a resume. Tell me about one thing you built from zero: what the problem was, what you did, and what happened. That's the conversation starter. Vera takes it from there.
sumanta@nspire.ai
nspire.ai
Referrals are deeply appreciated. If you know someone who fits this precisely — the 0→1 track record, the AI fluency, the founder community roots — please send them this page. The best candidates for this role are probably not actively looking.
#J-18808-Ljbffr