Partnerships & Influencer Marketer - 1st hire

About this role

Join an early-stage startup. Accelerate economic opportunity.

Join us as our 1st Partnerships & Influencer Marketer and 3rd marketing hire! You will:

- Own influencer, creator, and affiliate partnerships as a real acquisition channel: sourcing, negotiating, and running the deals end to end, and owning the channel's CPA and volume outcomes.

- Turn creator relationships into performance media: whitelisted/Spark ads, host-reads, and affiliate placements that run alongside and lift our paid social engine.

- Operate independently, drive clarity where it doesn't exist, and build a function from the ground up.

ABOUT US

- Kovo is expanding access to financial tools for people historically excluded from the traditional credit system. We believe everyone deserves the opportunity for economic independence, and we're building products that help people establish financial identity and unlock opportunity.

- Over the past three years, Kovo has grown revenue 20x while maintaining exceptional capital efficiency. We rank above the 99th percentile in revenue per employee benchmarks, reflecting the leverage of a small, high-performing team.

- The team combines the ambition of a venture-scale company with the discipline of a profitable business. We reached positive free cash flow early in our lifecycle, allowing us to grow with less dilution and focus on building for the long term.

- Kovo is backed by Inspired Capital and Homebrew, and built by alumni from Plaid, Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, Innovis, Chime, Robinhood, Opendoor, Honey, Possible, Monzo, OppFi, Splash, Mercury, Twilio, and more. We're looking for exceptional people to help us scale the company another 20x and beyond.

WHY YOU MIGHT BE EXCITED ABOUT US

- Direct impact on millions of people's ability to access credit

- High ownership with minimal bureaucracy

- Speed, learning, and impact are core values

WHY YOU MIGHT NOT BE EXCITED ABOUT US

- Roles and priorities evolve quickly

- Some systems and processes are still being built

- The pace of execution and career growth is intense (not optimized for work-life balance)

ABOUT THE ROLE

- We're hiring a Partnerships & Influencer Marketer to own relationship- and deal-driven acquisition: influencers and creators, affiliate and performance partnerships, and the placements that come with them. The deal is the spine of this job. You find the partners, negotiate the terms, and run the relationships - and you're accountable for what those deals produce: channel CPA and acquisition volume, not deal count.

- You won't operate alone. Your marketing teammates own the ad accounts (Meta, TikTok, Google, etc) and support measurement and media buying, so your creator content and partner placements plug into an engine that's already running. Your creator-sourced assets will run inside our paid social accounts as whitelisted/Spark ads, and you'll be measured on how they perform - every deal you sign should include the usage and whitelisting rights to make that possible.

- This channel has worked for us before and is wide open in our category today. You'll stand it up properly and scale what proves out.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Build the influencer and creator engine: source and vet creators, negotiate terms (moving deals toward CPA/hybrid structures where possible), manage the relationships, and keep a high-velocity pipeline from first contact to live placement.

- Own affiliate and performance partnerships: personal finance publishers, comparison sites, creators, and communities relevant to credit building - sourcing, structuring, and growing the deals that drive measurable acquisition.

- Turn partnerships into performance media: secure usage and whitelisting rights in every deal, and feed creator content into our paid social accounts as Spark/whitelisted ads in partnership with our performance marketing team.

- Own channel outcomes: CPA and volume for influencer and partnership channels, with asset-level and deal-level performance as your scorecard.

- Read and act on measurement: use our attribution and incrementality readouts (promo codes, vanity URLs, holdouts) to reprice deals, kill what doesn't perform, and double down on what does; the team supports test design and media buying.

- Build the playbook: deal templates, standard usage-rights terms, partner scorecards, and the processes that let this function scale beyond one person.

- Extend the brand through partnerships: organic social presence, creator collabs, co-marketing, podcast appearances, and earned-media placements with finance publishers; this is a secondary lane that runs through your partner pipeline, with acquisition outcomes always first.

- A little bit of everything! We are a small company, and you'll be expected to pick up many different things.

ABOUT YOU

- Energized by helping underserved people build financial identity and unlock economic opportunity.

- 4+ years in influencer, affiliate, partnerships, or performance-partnership marketing at a consumer startup (preferably consumer fintech), with a track record of deals that drove measurable acquisition - not just reach.

- Deal-savvy and scrappy: you can find, negotiate, and run external partners without hand-holding, and you've moved partners from flat-fee to performance-based terms.

- Fluent enough in data to be effective: you can read a CPA report or an incrementality readout, act on it, and defend your channel's numbers; you think in incremental impact, not impressions.

- Familiar with how creator content becomes paid media: whitelisting, Spark Ads, usage rights, and what makes creator assets perform in-feed.

- You get more done with AI: we expect everyone here to lean on AI tools to punch above their weight; it's part of how we stay this lean and efficient.

- Self-starter who thrives in ambiguity, handles shifting priorities fluidly, and takes full ownership of outcomes.

- Highly autonomous and thrive with hig

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