The hard part, stated plainly
There is an obvious version of what we sell. It is easier to explain, it already has a name, and several very well funded companies are already sitting in it, with more arriving. Positioning ourselves there would be the safe move, and we believe it would be fatal. It is a commodity ditch.
The position we believe in is harder to say, harder to sell on first contact, and much better. It makes a claim about how ordinary businesses become known that the incumbents cannot make.
Your job is to take that position, sharpen it, and make it real. Not invent it from nothing, and not soften it into the legible thing everyone else is selling. The pull toward that ditch will be constant, it will come from smart people with good reasons, and holding the line while still shipping revenue is the difficulty of the role.
If you have never had to defend a position that was right but harder to explain, this will not go well for either of us.
What we believe, and the ratio
Marketing exists to create demand, not to serve it. Not to support sales. Not to feed a pipeline. Most of the people who will eventually buy from us are not in the market today, and reaching them is not waste, it is the job. Our thinking is rooted in Ehrenberg-Bass: mental availability, distinctive brand assets, easy to remember beats clever at persuading.
So here is the ratio, plainly. About 60 percent of this role is creating demand (category, brand, reach, the argument) and about 40 percent is capturing it, with your own hands (the site, the signup funnel, lifecycle, paid, AEO, and the instrumentation that proves any of it worked).
Our lead platform is self-serve. There is no sales team standing by to catch a lead. If someone becomes interested and the path from interest to first dollar is bad, that is a marketing failure and it is yours. The bottom of the funnel is not beneath this job, it is downstream of it.
On measurement: we are not anti-data. We are against letting only the measurable things count.
You own marketing for Misfits & Machines. All of it, as a function of one, leveraged by AI, with executive air cover and a real creative engine behind you. When the model proves out, you hire beneath you.
What does not exist yet is the market believing any of it. Nobody outside this building uses our language. No demand engine, no baseline, no proof. Turning internal conviction into external reality is the whole assignment, and it is unglamorous more often than not.
This is a founding function inside a company that is not early stage: established leadership, developed doctrine, and a capital position most founding marketers never get. Want it because of that, not in spite of it.