Narratives Lead
Pulley
New York, NY, USA
USD 180k-200k / year + Equity
Location
New York
Employment Type
Full time
Location Type
Hybrid
Department
Marketing
Compensation
- $180K – $200K • Offers Equity
About Pulley
Pulley helps the country’s top architects, builders, and retailers speed up every project in their portfolio. With AI-powered permitting intelligence and expert guidance, we eliminate costly delays and bring predictability across the full lifecycle of commercial projects.
Today, permitting is the slowest, most uncertain part of building, spread across 19,000+ jurisdictions with different rules, timelines, and surprises. Pulley gives project teams the clarity and predictability they need to move from planning to opening without delays.
We support rollout programs for brands like J.Crew, Solidcore, and Hibbett Sports, as well as major data center buildouts, EV charging networks, and other commercial projects. Our platform dramatically reduces approval timelines, improves forecasting accuracy, and removes thousands of hours of manual work from design and construction teams.
Founded in 2021, Pulley combines deep permitting expertise with purpose-built AI from people who have created products used by millions. We’re backed by CRV, Susa Ventures, Fifth Wall, and leaders from Plaid, Segment, ServiceTitan, and Procore.
The Role
We're hiring our first Narratives Lead to own and build how Pulley tells its story. This role sits at the intersection of content, product marketing, and brand — but we're not looking for someone who fits neatly into any of those boxes. We want a storyteller with intellectual gravitas: someone who can get deep inside our customers' heads, understand the problem space, and produce original, high-quality work across every medium that matters.
As the first hire in this function, you'll define what narrative means at Pulley and have broad exposure across the company. Your work will directly shape how customers, partners, press, and the market understand what we're building and why it matters.
What You'll Do
Own the Company Narrative: Build and maintain Pulley's messaging spine — the simplest, most credible version of our story — and make sure every deck, pitch, and one-pager is anchored to it.
Write the Big Stuff: Long-form essays, founder POV pieces, keynote ghostwriting, LinkedIn content, case studies with real creative input. Not repurposed blog posts — original thinking that earns attention.
Build Story Systems: Create frameworks, naming, and narrative arcs for products and initiatives. Develop a living proof bank of case studies, outcomes, and "why we built this" artifacts that compound over time.
Produce the Assets: Own the primary company deck, one-pagers, scripts, and web narratives. Own the company messaging framework end-to-end.
Lead Multimedia Storytelling: Direction on podcasts, video, and other formats — you don't have to produce everything yourself, but you set the creative bar and own the output.
Set the Editorial Standard: Define Pulley's voice and taste. Be the reason we ship work we're proud of.
Partner Across the Company: Work directly with founders and GTM/Product/Ops to distill what's true and make it legible. Be a thought partner to leadership on narrative strategy.
What You'll Bring
Strong writing — the kind where people forward it, reference it, or save it. A portfolio you can point to and explain why it works.
Intellectual curiosity and real operating experience: you've worked inside a business, understand how things actually get built, and bring domain depth — not just writing craft
Non-traditional background: we've found that linear content marketing progressions produce A-to-B thinking. We're more interested in former journalists, operators who write, essayists who've worked in startups, or smart builders with a strong public body of work
Active presence beyond LinkedIn — Substack, Medium, Twitter/X, YouTube, a newsletter, a blog. You publish because you have something to say.
Ability to get inside complex, technical problem spaces and make them feel inevitable and interesting to a general audience
Synthesis and collaboration: you can take a 90-minute founder conversation and come back with a draft that surprises them with how well it captures what they meant
Nice to Have
Background in B2B, infrastructure, real estate, construction, or govtech — or genuine curiosity about why cities work the way they do
Journalistic or editorial background combined with real business or operating experience (journalism alone isn't enough — we need someone with skin in the game, not just a synthesizer of online articles)
Experience in an early-stage or zero-to-one environment where you built the function from scratch
You've coined a framework or named a concept that others adopted
Comfort with podcast direction, video concepts, or multimedia formats
A little humor — we're serious about building, but we like to have fun
Compensation Range: $180K - $200K