Narratives & Communications Lead — Basis (New York, on-site 5 days/week)
Basis recently raised a $100M Series B at a $1.15B valuation, led by Accel and GV, following their $34M Series A led by Khosla Ventures. They're scaling aggressively and looking for someone to tell the story of Basis, the company.
ABOUT THE ROLE
You'll define how the world sees Basis. Basis is creating new categories at the intersection of AI and accounting, which means there's no playbook to follow. You'll establish the company voice and figure out the stories Basis is uniquely positioned to tell. Basis writes publicly, but not nearly often enough — they need someone to change that, crafting a company narrative that stands out, especially to best-in-class ML/eng talent. This is a narrative/employer-branding-focused role, NOT a Head of Marketing or full-stack marketing seat.
WHAT MAKES BASIS SPECIAL (your narrative toolkit)
- Frontier of applied AI: One of the few application-layer companies whose agents are actually deployed into firms doing real work, converting raw model intelligence into economic productivity in an industry as critical as accounting.
- Centrality of accounting: Accounting is the grammar of the financial economy. The quality of accounting directly impacts the quality of economic decision making.
- Working in the real economy: Arming accountants with teams of agents that take on laborious/manual tasks, guide them toward a real-time close, and unlock hidden insights — with the long-term ambition of a 1000x increase in accounting and a commensurate increase in decision quality.
WHAT BASIS LOOKS FOR
- Excellent writer crafting compelling narratives extraordinarily well
- First principles reasoner who breaks complex technical problems into fundamental components
- Understands the zeitgeist — knows what best-in-class engineers/technologists think, read, and care about; likely active on X and/or Substack
- Taste and judgment to distinguish authentic vs. packaged messaging
- All-in: not a 9-5 role; Basis is optimizing for the best folks and is happy to compensate generously
CALIBRATION NOTES (from May 7 call with Paraform / Theo)
- Basis are "suckers for pedigree" — elite university backgrounds strongly preferred
- High interest in AI is a non-negotiable; technologist-first orientation required
- Decent social presence on X and/or LinkedIn is a hard requirement (doesn't need to be a huge following, but must be meaningful and tech-leaning)
- Public writing portfolio is a strong nice-to-have, not a hard requirement (work in this sector is rarely attributed publicly; LinkedIn-featured work counts)
- Education and YOE cap are flexible; watch out for candidates that read as "too senior" even within range
- VC background = comms for VC funds, NOT investor-side
- Fintech background is a strong positive signal
- Avoid candidates with multiple short tenures (sub-12-month) without a strong supporting narrative
- Avoid generic tech marketers or political writers
- Goal: 2 solid candidates within 3 weeks; non-P0 priority internally at Basis
- Move fast on top candidates — Basis lost their #1 prior candidate to a competing offer because of slow booking
BENCHMARK CANDIDATES (from prior search — use as calibration anchors)
LOGISTICS
- Salary: $100K - $225K + meaningful equity
- Location: New York, in-person 5 days/week
- Visa sponsorship: available
- Hiring 1 candidate
- Reports into the founding team
- 4-step interview process