Product at Substack
The PM team at Substack is small, scrappy, and covers a lot of ground. You’d be joining as only the third 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, CEO, and majority of company leadership (who you will be working with very closely) are all based. 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.
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, user 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 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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Top Skills
What We Do
Substack lets writers connect with their audience on their own terms and earn money doing it. We make it simple for writers to publish to an email list that they own, get discovered on the web, and charge for subscriptions.
More than 500,000 people pay to subscribe to writers across the Substack network, and the top writers make millions of dollars a year. Substack’s model depends on the success of writers using Substack – we only make money when they do.
“Substack makes it dead simple to start a newsletter and get paid for it.” – Judd Legum, author of Popular Information
"Substack gives me a way to connect with my audience on my own terms.” – Lyz Lenz, author of God Land and Men Yell At Me
Make something that matters
Great writing is valuable. It respects readers' time, their intelligence, and their trust. It helps us make sense of and change the culture we live in. At Substack, we're building a business model that enables great writing to thrive. Learn more about our opportunity and mission.
We are a small but growing team, and there is more to build than we could ever imagine. That’s why we need you.
We aim to take pragmatic approaches to problem solving while shipping high-quality products that allow the writing on Substack to take the spotlight.
Every person at the company participates in customer support. We do this to build empathy with our users and enable us to build better products.
We believe that a diverse team will help us build a product that best serves the needs of a wildly diverse ecosystem of writers. So whatever your background or perspective, we’d welcome your input to help build the best possible version of Substack.
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