Director Cool Zone Media Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Podium is building the operating system for local business in the age of AI, and we need the world to know it. We're hiring our first Director of Founder Communications to own our external communications strategy and build a founder-led comms function from the ground up. It's a brand new role, and one of the most unique comms jobs in tech right now. This is a high visibility, high accountability role that requires a candidate who exercises extreme ownership, thrives in ambiguity, and moves at startup speed. A builder and a doer, not a manager of agencies. We believe the best way to reach the people who matter is not traditional PR. The founder is the voice, the story goes direct, and we reverse engineer everything from the outcomes we want to drive, not activity for its own sake. You'll build the strategy that targets our two priority audiences, strategic customers and investors, and convinces them of one thing above all: Podium is the number one authority in AI for the industries we serve. This role is the connective tissue between Podium's story and the people who need to hear it.

The function is founder-led and goes direct. Eric provides the voice and the conviction. You hone the story and build the infrastructure to carry it to the people who matter, consistently. 

• Build the motion. Own the strategy end to end: how we reach our audiences and the channels we use, the cadence that keeps us in the conversation, what each audience needs to believe, and the internal processes that let us produce the right content. Built backward from the outcomes we want.
• Develop founder thought leadership that makes Podium the category-defining voice in applied AI. Turn Eric's point of view at the intersection of local business and AI into a steady drumbeat of high-quality content, published primarily through social and long-form essays.
• Develop recurring content programs around key launch moments, performance milestones, and customer ROI stories, plus technical deep dives with our EPD org that show Podium building on the bleeding edge.
• Stand up the AI-native workflows that let a lean team produce like a big one: capturing raw material at scale (meetings, customer calls, product reviews) and turning it into a steady stream of near-publishable content suggestions.
• Scale Eric's social presence quickly. Own the strategy to grow reach and engagement on X and LinkedIn: what we post, how we show up in the right conversations, and how we compound an audience over time.
• Secure Eric on a hit list of strike-zone media, focused on podcasts where he can tell our story. We have very little interest in pitching traditional press.
• Cultivate a network of Podium champions (partners, influential industry voices, investors, and friends of Podium) to help amplify and distribute our founder content.
• Develop an incredible understanding of Eric's voice: what he cares about and how he'd want to talk about it. Build the judgment and intuition to proactively suggest angles, frame ideas the way he would, and be maximally efficient with his time.
• Build the measurement methodology and milestones. Tie the work to mindshare, inbound, deal credibility, and pipeline, and iterate.

Must Haves

• Experience running comms, brand, or founder content at a high-growth tech, AI, or consumer company. Alignment to the founder-led approach is a must, strong preference for founder-led experience. 
• Exceptional writer and storyteller who can capture and scale a founder's voice with sharp hooks for social and strong long-form. 
• Extreme ownership and high velocity. You run the function autonomously, protect the CEO's time, and would rather ship something great today than something perfect next month.
• Media instincts and taste. You know what makes people stop scrolling and what not to make. Wired into the modern media ecosystem (podcasters, newsletter writers, creators) or able to get there fast.
• Sharp strategic mind. You can figure out what an audience needs to believe to act, hone it into clear themes, and build the how.
• Deep AI fluency. You use AI heavily in your own work, know how to build workflows around content, and can show us what you've built.
• Stay obsessively current on trends in AI, SaaS, SMB, and the verticals Podium serves -- this person should already be all over X and immersed in these conversations before they apply.

Nice-to-Haves

• Familiarity with the go-direct, founder-led comms playbook.
• A network across investors and tech and business media.
• Familiarity with our verticals (automotive, home services, healthcare and aesthetics).