About the Role
Most people still experience AI as a generic chatbot and most of what they use it for is a more powerful search engine. Ping is defining a new way AI is used in everyday life at the consumer level, and we’re building the infrastructure and the consumer experiences to make this real across multiple domains.
As our founding growth hire, you'll help shape and build the growth engine from the ground up, helping shape how AI is being embedded into everyday life for consumers.
We're backed by several notable VCs and a strong angel network, including early backers of Notion, Anduril, and more.
What you’ll do
This is a hands-on, direct execution role, you'll own user acquisition and work directly with the founding team to scale Ping across paid, organic, creative, and product-led channels.
This is not a role where you manage one channel. You'll work across campus, creators, partnerships, events, referrals, social, and new growth experiments, wherever users can come from.
You should be comfortable doing both strategy and execution. One day you might be building a campus referral program, the next negotiating a creator collaboration, showing up at an activation, interviewing users, or filming a TikTok yourself.
You should be extremely strong in at least one of these areas:
1.Organic and growth loops
You understand and build channels that compound: referrals, ambassadors, creators, communities, merchant partnerships, events, and product loops that make it easier for one user to bring the next.
You are not just trying to buy users. You are building the moat underneath the funnel.
We don't just want to acquire users one at a time.
2.Paid acquisition
You have run Meta, TikTok, Google, or other paid channels at scale. You can look at a campaign, understand what is working, kill what is not, and move budget toward the highest-performing bets.
You understand CAC, payback, creative fatigue, attribution, funnel drop-off, and how to scale without burning money.
3.Creative engine
You know how to produce, test, and iterate on UGC, static ads, short-form videos, hooks, landing pages, and creator content at volume.
You should be comfortable being on camera and becoming one of the people who represents Ping publicly.
You'll help create and test short-form content across TikTok and Instagram, participate in street interviews and activations, work with creators, and turn what is happening in the real world into content people want to watch and share.
You have a strong point of view on why something performs. You can tell when a hook is weak, when a video feels fake, and when a creative concept has the potential to scale.
You build systems that ship new creative every week.
4.Campus & community growth
Build Ping's presence across NYC campuses and communities.
Recruit and manage ambassadors, work with student organizations and event organizers, get Ping into existing parties and communities, and create activations that people genuinely want to join.
You should be comfortable being on the ground — not just sending outreach from behind a laptop.
What We're Looking For
Bias to action. You execute. You don't spend two weeks building a deck about how to reach college students — you talk to students, test something, see what happens, and improve it. There’s no real separation between strategy and execution here. You might plan a growth experiment in the morning, meet a campus organization in the afternoon, film at an event that evening, and check the numbers after.
Extremely resourceful. You find unconventional ways to get things done. If cold outreach isn't working, you find someone who already knows 50 merchants. If a formal campus partnership takes two months, you find another way into the campus next week.
Strong consumer instinct. You understand why people download an app, show up to something, invite a friend, share content, or stop using a product. You pay attention to culture, social media, communities, and how people actually behave.
Comfortable with people — and on camera. You enjoy talking to users and are comfortable representing Ping publicly. You can walk into a student event, talk to a creator, pitch a community organizer, interview someone on the street, or jump into a TikTok when needed.
Data-oriented. You care about outcomes, not activity. You want to know which channels brought users, how many activated, what they cost, whether they came back, and what we should do differently next week.
You’ve built something that grows. Maybe you’ve grown a consumer app, community, marketplace, or social product; built an acquisition channel from zero; run a campus or ambassador program; worked with creators; built referral loops; organized offline activations; or created short-form content yourself. We care less about the exact title you had and more about what you actually made happen.
Experience at an early-stage startup is a plus. Strong opinions on why consumer products spread are even better.
Compensation: base salary $80,000 - $100,000 + bonus + meaningful founding-team equity
About Ping
We’re building toward something bigger: a personal AI that doesn't just answer questions generically, but one that knows what you care about and acts proactively in the real world to make it happen.
We're building at the intersection of consumer technology and the physical world, starting with New York.
