Founding Growth Lead
ABOUT SPHERE
Every breakthrough in trade infrastructure has followed the same pattern: reduce a transaction cost, expand the market. Containerization for goods. SWIFT for money. Stripe for payments. Compliance is one of the last and largest — and the hardest, because trade rules aren't data to be looked up. They're a complex adaptive system with 190+ sovereign jurisdictions, in different languages, changing constantly, reacting to each other.
Sphere built the system that solves it. Our AI (TRAM) ingests global trade law, interprets it, resolves conflicts across jurisdictions, and produces compliance determinations more reliable than human experts. We handle the entire lifecycle — calculation, registration, filing, remittance — at millisecond latency with zero downtime.
Backed by a16z and YC. $21M Series A, 30%+ month-over-month growth, customers include ElevenLabs, Replit, Deel, Runway, and Lovable.
Small team, global surface area. Everyone owns a domain that would be a full team at a larger company. San Francisco, five days in office.
The problem keeps compounding.Expanding into input tax, withholding, e-invoicing, tariffs — each multiplies the complexity. Tens of millions of transactions today, billions ahead.
THE ROLE
Sphere is looking for a Founding Growth Lead based in San Francisco to work closely with the Founder to help amplify our brand messaging, build out our direct and partner channels, establish our presence in numerous international markets and take us to $100m+ in ARR.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
Fuel and build out our direct channels:
Socials: Drive our content strategy across the org and streamline our branding / messaging across social channels / review platforms.
SEO: Continue to build upon our strong SEO growth with our fabulous SEO advisor (Irina Maltseva)
Product led: Work with engineering to build growth loops into our product (30% of our current inbound leads come from existing customer referrals).
Other: We have exciting ideas around OOH / influencer advertising that we want to execute on
Build out partner channels: We get 35% of our inbount leads from partners (accounting / tax firms, other fintech software providers). We want to double down on that in the US and especially internationally.
Set up international GTM operations: What we do best is international and it continues to be our strategic focus into 2026. You'll need to help build out our growth channels in these regions and may even set up there for a period of time.
REQUIREMENTS
Proven experience build out growth channels in a B2C or B2B software platform.
Early-stage startup experience (building processes from scratch).
You have a presence on social media and can drive engagement (i.e. you're vocal)
NICE TO HAVES
A network in the CFO / finance / accounting community.
WHO YOU ARE
You'll thrive here if:
You're a Dog. You've been underestimated, gone through struggle, and never stopped running. You have a chip on your shoulder and enormous drive. You look at Stripe, Deel, and Flexport all punting on compliance and think: good, that means the opportunity is ours. Hunger beats pedigree.
Early stage is in your bones. You've built things where there's no playbook and nobody handing you the answer. You define the problem instead of waiting for instructions.
You own it end to end. Give you a goal and you figure out your own path. Small team, global surface area — everyone owns a domain that would be a full team at a larger company. No one tells you how.
You believe speed and accuracy are both possible. We're building a complex product that requires robustness and 100% uptime, and we have to build at our customers' pace. Move fast. Don't break things. Both.
Being in the room is a feature, not a cost. Five days in SF isn't a policy, it's how the work gets done. The speed and density of collaboration we need doesn't survive over video.
This won't be a fit if:
You need structure handed to you or ambiguity feels draining rather than motivating
You want to manage people more than own hard problems (we're a flat, experienced team — everyone builds)
You're used to "good enough" shipping (small errors have outsized impact here)
Being in the room five days a week feels like a cost instead of a benefit