About Us:

TextMarks is the leading mobile alerting platform for SMBs and independent software developers. Founded in 2006, we are a lean startup that has grown organically.  After a few years of experimentation we are now profitable and poised for growth.

About the Job:

We have working product and satisfied, paying customers. We have taken no outside funding and operate a cash-flow positive business – and we want to keep it that way. We are looking for a hands-on person with strong online marketing and product DNA to grow our paid subscriber base. We make no bones about it – we’re looking for someone to drive the company. Your immediate reponsibilities will be:

• 65% Marketing / Customer acquisition: We have not tuned our customer acquisition funnel nor have we tried to proactively market or sell our product.  AT ALL. Your first order of business will be to implement low cost / no cost, data-driven customer acquisition experiments on top of our platform. We want you to gather up all the “low hanging fruit” and bump customer conversions and revenues before doing anything else.
• 20% Product / Enhancements: Some of your better customer acquisition ideas will require enhancements. We want you to devise new offerings, define the experience & execute the marketing plan. These will likely take the form of mini-sites and slightly customized versions of our core offering that are targeted at specific user types. We have a few ideas of our own that you can run with (provided you like them, of course).
• 15% Vision: We are looking for someone with the ambition to take us to the next level. We are already a leader in the emerging mobile alerts category. Right now our focus is on increasing revenues with what we know works, but as you bump up revenues there will be more cash to invest in new initiatives which we’ll want you to conceive, refine and manage.

As you increase subscription revenues (hence have more cash to re-invest in the business) these percentages will shift. For the right candidate significant equity and revenue participation is available (in addition to a competitive salary).

About You:

• A bachelors degree and a bare minimum of 3 years of professional experience.  Much more would be great.
• Very high personal throughput – you are one of those people who somehow gets a lot more done than almost everyone else you know.
• You have some experience working on websites / software technology products - and you want to keep doing so. You are aware of interesting things going on the web OR in mobile and can have intelligent discussions about them.
• A steady paycheck is good right now, but what gets you fired up is the opportunity to work with great people in an exciting market.
• You know a bunch of stuff, but know you don’t know everything. The opportunity to work 1 on 1 with a been there / done that entrepreneur side by side sounds exciting.
• You like to move fast. You are all about action. Your bias is to try stuff “quick and dirty” to see what works and then iterate. You tend to roll your eyes when someone says it will take two months to get something done – you are about getting smaller things done in a few days and moving on. You already "get" that less is more.
• You are achievement oriented. You have done things that attract competitive people in the past. You’ve won before, but know that winning takes hard work, dedication and (often) personal sacrifice. You’ve lost before but not so often that you are afraid to take risks.
• You have lots of writing experience, ideally web copywriting experience. You have marketing insticts.

Nice to have:

• You are metrics oriented and detail driven. You think (or would like to learn how to think) in terms of small experiments and tests - so you can know if things are actually working rather than think they are working. It’s your nature to try to eliminate guesswork.
• Previous hands on online marketing or web-based product management, product marketing or marketing communications (marcomm) experience.
• Experience building landing pages and mini-sites to drive conversions for a SAAS application.
• Experience managing contractors to deliver small projects
• Experience in customer facing roles (sales / account management / customer service)
• Experience working as an early “get #*%@ done” employee at a startup.
• You can work onsite in our (nice) office in San Francisco, CA most of the time.

Cover Letter: (required)

Applications without cover letters will not be considered. Please include the following in your cover letter:

• Explain why this sounds like a good opportunity & a good fit for you. Be specific.
• Spend a few minutes on www.texmarks.com and give us a few notes/suggestions on how you might improve things (we know it needs a lot of work)