Product Manager

Substack is building a new economic engine for culture, giving the brightest, most interesting, and most creative people on the internet the power of their own publishing platform. The terms of our culture should not be set by gate-keeping legacy media or chaos-fueling social media, but by the people who make and participate in that culture. Substack’s model, based on direct subscriptions, has fueled an explosion of independent publishing. It empowers creators with economic autonomy, creative ownership, and a direct connection to their most engaged audiences.

The PM team at Substack is small, scrappy, and covers a lot of ground. You’d be joining as the second PM, responsible for a large product surface area and on the hook for ambitious goals. PMs at Substack don’t have a wide array of other specialists to lean on. We get into the details with designers and engineers, talk directly with users, and handle much of the go-to-market motion themselves. We often write our own copy, run our own analyses, and conduct our own research. If this sounds more exciting than daunting, that’s a good sign.

This position will ideally be located in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the rest of the PM team and majority of company leadership are based.

Responsibilities

• Form a deep understanding of the current state of play in your domain and identify the biggest opportunities for development and growth

• Build a compelling roadmap at the short term, medium term, and long term horizons

• Help design and spec projects across the spectrum from experiment, to feature, to large-scale initiative

• Work closely with the leadership team to ensure that your team’s product strategy and the overall company strategy are in lock-step at all times

• Fully own the product marketing and go-to-market strategy for everything your team ships

• Partner with your EM counterpart to inspire and lead a full-stack team of engineers, designers, and product analysts — creating clarity and accountability for them at every level

Requirements

We value aptitude, drive, and execution ability more than having many years of direct product management experience (but having real product experience at a similarly high-growth company is definitely useful). Here are some attributes of successful PMs at Substack:

• A deep understanding of Substack’s product, use base, and market position

• An ability to roll up your sleeves and do what needs to be done with limited resources and support

• Comfortable operating at every level of abstraction (from high level product/business strategy to “what should the CTA say” level details)

• Strong analytical skills, competence in SQL (at least enough to guide an LLM to do your bidding!), and experience with BI tools like Periscope — growth frameworks like cohort analysis and growth accounting should be second nature

• Strong communication skills — must be able to write a compelling strategy doc, internal or external blog post, and present to the company regularly

• Ability to collaborate well with company leadership and other teams

Substack’s compensation package includes a market competitive salary, equity for all full time roles, and exceptional benefits. Our cash compensation salary range for this role is $160,000 - $215,000. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Substack is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or transgender status), age, national origin, veteran or disability status. We’re seeking people passionate about enabling independent expression and building a better business model for creators. If you want to see what media, communities, and content can become when unmoored from advertising models, and you have the skills and experience to contribute, we’d love to meet you.

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