Marketing Lead

About YLAB

We are building the AI that we would give to our own children.

Children grow up with AI today. We ensure that this AI sparks curiosity rather than addiction, is safe rather than data-hungry, and is built for children rather than adults.

We are YLAB, a small AI lab from Cologne-Ehrenfeld. We develop software and hardware from a single source, from the language model to the casing. Our first product is Onoo, a screen-free learning companion for children aged four and up. Onoo asks questions, prompts guessing, and thinks along. It has no camera and no display, shows no advertisements, and sells no data.

Why YLAB

Your work ends up in the children's room, not in a dashboard.

Software & Hardware: AI, app, firmware, and device are created together here. You see code become something a child holds in their hand.

You work on real open questions, for example, how AI understands children's voices and explains the world to five-year-olds.

Tech, pedagogy, and research sit at the same table here.

Honesty instead of glossy finish: We build many things for the first time. If this appeals to you, we should talk.

What We Offer

• Responsibility from day one: You get real topics and problems instead of tickets, and your decisions have weight.

• Top work equipment: You work with the setup and tools you need.

• Flexible further education: Conference, course, or workshop – you tell us what will advance you.

• Hybrid with heart: Remote when you need peace, and in the office when we tinker together.

About the Role

Our first product is Onoo: a small, screen-free AI friend that answers children between 4 and 9 their 'why' questions. The prototype works, the launch is in 2027. Now we need someone to bring Onoo into the minds and living rooms of parents.

You are our first marketing person, with a seat at the founders' table. No agency, no team under you, no established processes. You build brand, community, and funnel from scratch – first with your own hands, then with a team.

What awaits you: a hardware product plus subscription, direct sales in DACH, and parents as a target group who want the best for their children and take data protection seriously. And a topic where AI and children are in the same sentence. The winner is whoever can build trust.

How You Can Help Us

• You turn Onoo into a brand that parents understand immediately: positioning, story, tone – from the video to the packaging.

• You build our UGC machine: find creators, brief them, write hooks, test 10-20 ad variants every week, learn, repeat.

• You get 5,000 families on the waiting list before Onoo is available for purchase – and keep them engaged (newsletter, social, 'Children's Question of the Day').

• You turn our beta families into fans: reviews, videos, testimonials, real stories.

• You build the funnel from waiting list to subscription: landing page, shop, email flows, referral program, subscription activation, churn prevention.

• You run Paid Social (Meta, TikTok) yourself, measure cleanly (tracking, attribution, CAC, LTV), and make decisions based on numbers.

• You get us into the magazines, podcasts, and feeds that parents in DACH truly read and listen to.

• You make the founders visible (LinkedIn, Instagram) – our cheapest channel before launch.

• You ensure that our marketing keeps the promise of the product: no children as advertising figures, data protection lived, advertising clearly marked, no fake UGC.

• You have a crisis playbook in your drawer in case Onoo ever says something wrong to a child.

• From launch onwards, you build the team and bring in freelancers and agencies where it's worthwhile.

Get in Touch If:

• You have 5+ years of consumer marketing experience, preferably D2C with subscription or hardware.

• You have built a brand from scratch before or were at the forefront of building one.

• You don't just know UGC, but have built a creative testing machine and can tell us which hook rate your best creative had and why.

• You can do lifecycle marketing: Klaviyo or similar, flows, segments, churn.

• You like numbers: CAC, LTV, cohorts, payback, and speak the same language as our co-founder in finance.

• You run ads yourself, write copy, edit videos, build decks, and don't just delegate.

• You know the DACH market and have negotiation-level German skills.

• You use AI tools for content daily and know their limits.

• You find children, parents, and education exciting. Not just as a target group.

• You want responsibility before everything is finished.

Probably not if: you've mainly managed budgets and agencies lately and no longer want to get your hands dirty. Or if you can only do performance, but not brand. Or only brand, but not numbers.