Company Overview
Academia.edu is a venture-backed, for-profit business based in San Francisco whose mission is to accelerate the world’s research. Our platform enables researchers worldwide to effortlessly find and access academic papers, stay current with peers and relevant research areas, and enhance their ability to publish and distribute their work. With over 100 million academic papers, a vast user base of over 250 million and adoption by over half of the academic community, we're at the forefront of transforming the $25 billion academic publishing industry.
The Role
We are seeking a high-performing Product Leader to lead our Premium Products group. This group is responsible for the monetization efforts for our business, encapsulated in our Premium subscription. Your mandate will be to drive up the number of academics subscribing to Academia, through both pricing and payment innovations and by improving our ‘Premium’ offering. This includes pricing, product marketing, new feature development, and existing feature optimization. You will be responsible for 4 product teams, both with PMs in seats and the need to build out (and hire) the area further.
Key Responsibilities
- Drive adoption and growth of the Premium product offering
- Define the overarching strategy for your group and align with exec stakeholders
- Hire and support a high-performing product team; with a track record of empowering reports
- IC a product team in the early stages of your time with us, in order to show execution excellence and model performance to your reports
- Advocate for and up-skill product as a function in your area, and across the company
Requirements
- 7-12 years of product experience, with a focus on B2C and/or subscription products
- Previous experience in one of growth, pricing, subscription feature development
- Previous experience hiring and leveling-up PMs
- Strong IC product skills; you know how to “lead from the front” and teach best practices
- Exceptional communication skills, both written and oral
- Demonstrated ability to make a significant business impact, autonomously
- Customer-centric approach with a knack for data-driven validation
- Experience working with cross-functional teams (ENG, UXR, Data, Design) and leaders
- Startup experience is essential; bonus for a history of successful product pivots
- Technical understanding and ability to engage in high-level technical discussions
- Extensive experience with A/B testing and user research (both qualitative and quantitative)Proven expertise in scaling products to millions of users
Nice to Haves
- Experience in Edtech or Academia
- A stint in growth-stage tech companies during a ‘high-growth’ period, particularly with a subscription model
- Experience in launching products from inception to market (0->1)
- Background in working with Large Language Models (LLMs)
Diversity and Inclusion
Academia is a proud equal-opportunity employer and we are committed to hiring and supporting a diverse workforce. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
What We Do
Academia.edu has built and is expanding the premier distribution and peer review platform for academic research. Guided by our mission to democratize and accelerate the world’s research, Academia aims to make every academic paper ever published available for free online and accessible by anyone in the world. This is just the start of our long-term vision and we are growing fast!
Academia’s platform has registered more than 250 million users (still growing at 2-3M monthly), and has many millions of unique visitors every month, including over 100M logged-in monthly active users (MAU). We have over 300,000 paying premium subscribers, which has contributed to us being profitable YOY the last three years in a row.
Academia has attracted $39 million in investment from leading VC firms including Khosla Ventures, True Ventures, Spark Capital, and Tencent. Our work has garnered favorable attention from trade and mainstream media including UK Times, Fortune, Wired, EdTech, Venture Beat, San Francisco Business Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, TechCrunch, Scientific American, and Forbes.
Academia is a proud equal opportunity employer and we are committed to hiring and supporting a diverse workforce. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
Why Work With Us
At our San Francisco office, experience a blend of picturesque workdays and remote flexibility. Our consistent positive cash flow, strategic executive hires, and recent $23M series D funding underline our stability and innovation. Engage with a passionate team; we've grown to ~110 employees with ~45 dedicated engineers.
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Academia.edu Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
All new employees based in North America to work hybrid: 2 days in-office on Tuesdays and Thursdays at our San Francisco, California office and may work from home for the rest of week.
