Founder's Associate

About Product People

Product People is the premier destination for Product Management services in Europe. Our in-house staff helps you cover parental leaves discover/deliver great products and accelerate transformation by acting as bar-raising pacesetters. We empower our Product community of 50000 members to share knowledge generously whilst managing the unglamorous hands-on work of a Product/Program Manager or Product Ops on an interim/fractional basis (3+ months). We onboard fast align teams and deliver outcomes. Clients include Zalando DeepL and the World Health Organization.

About the Role

• Help Product People be category-defining in the consulting space. When people think of electric cars they think of Tesla. For music it’s Spotify. When thinking about Product Management they should think of Product People. You’ll own or contribute to initiatives to lead us there: playbooks product management knowledge sharing networking process automation etc.

• Shape our service offerings. We’re great at the here and now. This role focuses on maximizing our future. Bezos said “Think 3 years out; the current financial quarter was determined 3 years ago”; Figure out what problems are worth solving why for whom how big is the market and what is success.

• Run hands-on experiments to validate hypotheses. Find the cheapest fastest way to test our riskiest assumptions. These can be in growth/demand generation brand building of our existing model or new revenue streams. Run the experiments analyze data and pitch to CXOs.

• Internal solopreneur. Act as a sparing partner for the Founder and run on your own without a dedicated headcount. We help you with expertise in No-Code tools growth tactics and network/connections to reach the relevant audience.

• Rinse and repeat. Help us review the results and understand if we scale the solution or discard it. Move on to the next bets.

About You

• Bias towards action. Be very pragmatic move forward especially when risks are low and quickly unblock yourself by finding answers and help. Understand one-way door vs revolving door decisions.

• Desire to be in a high-ownership role. You need to be comfortable with getting your hands dirty. Do the full cycle from initial idea triage discovery testing and analysis to pitching your recommendations to CxOs.

• Analytical and evidence-driven. You love numbers and backing everything you do with them. From doing research on new topics and tracking KPIs to manually cleaning and enriching historical data.

• High cognitive flexibility. In most cases you’ll need to absorb a lot of knowledge and new ways of working within a few days. And we won't have all our clients' context on internal priorities and politics. You’ll be surprised often especially since clients are not always the most organized.

• Optimism as an Operating System . You have a relatively high happiness set point. You are rarely rattled and handle high-pressure situations with timely composed and candid reactions. Our job is “humans all the way down”.

• Direct feedback and open communication . We give timely kind and immediate feedback to help each other grow and do excellent work for our clients. We expect that you give/accept it graciously learn and adapt quickly.

• Language: English (C2 or Native)

• Timezone: You live within +/- 2 CET preferably in Europe.

What Makes Us Special

• Accelerated personal and career growth. See behind the curtain of Europe’s most exciting companies from series B to publicly listed—10x your learning and network by working on many digital products both B2B and B2C.

• Amazing culture. We have a supportive high-performance and open culture. It starts with onboarding you well. We hire and retain the best people living our values while counseling to leave those happier elsewhere. We share knowledge generously while being excellent and candid with each other . We encourage the best calendar practices with efficient 15-minute meetings blocks for focus time and meeting-free Fridays.

• Distributed-first . We work remotely and meet in person every 6 months for a weeklong team retreat in a great location. Team members from the same city/country meet every 1-3 months to co-work and expense the lunch/dinner.

  • We operate in Central European Time and our team values effective collaboration. To ensure seamless communication and teamwork and support a sustainable lifestyle we accommodate a maximum time difference of +4.5 hours / -1 to -2 hours. Please consider this when applying for the position.

• Germany Relocation after 24+ months (optional) . We sponsor a relocation to Berlin Germany for team members at L4+ levels who've been with our firm for at least 24 months. Should you decide to relocate on your own before being eligible for our support we can only change your work contract to the German one after you have your visa and paperwork in order.

• Sabbaticals. Take 1-3 months of unpaid leave anytime; we’ll cover your health insurance. And you get an extra paid month off every 3 years of tenure.

Compensation

• Based on the location of tax residence and level. The exact level is defined based on the skills and knowledge demonstrated within the hiring process which includes unbiased blind review. To ensure fairness the salaries are the same for everyone within the same level and Location Cluster. See our transparent salaries .

• Tenure-Based Compensation Increase . A 5% increase after 12 months and a 10% increase after 24 months of tenure. Resets and restarts when promoted to the next level.

• Uncapped bonuses (quarterly) We usually pay ~€25000/quarter in bonuses to team members. These are transparently shared across our organization. (e.g. €3000 employee referral €1000 client expansion €1000 when a client returns etc.). To be eligible the team member must be at Product People at the end of the quarter and not pending an exit (resignation termination counsel to leave).

• Profit participation (yearly). In March we split a % of last year’s profit between all eligible employees with 12+ months of tenure at the time of the payout and not pending an exit (resignation termination counsel to leave).

Growth Opportunities

• Measurement of success. We prioritize continuous growth and feedback. Regular performance appraisals are led by line managers and VP/Director of Product and involve monthly reviews of a 3-month development plan focusing on skill growth. Evaluations encompass 360 feedback direct observations by managers and adherence to Product People Leveling Expectations.

• Promotions. To be promoted meet the role's tenure criteria demonstrate performance at the next level for 6 months and submit an approved promotion case. We have a strong track record of promoting people from within and taking team members from Associate to Product Manager or from Senior to Director of Product during their tenure at Product People.

• Continuous learning. Continuous learning is at our core. Embracing 'Spread knowledge generously' we foster growth through weekly Sharing and Rubber Ducky sessions a dedicated #help channel and promoting peer mentorship. These opportunities complement the structured mentoring from line managers and mission supervisors in the Product People Trio framework. We also offer a Learning Budget to expand your Product Management knowledge.

For more detailed information about our culture ways of working transparent salaries and career track please visit our Prospective Candidate FAQs . See Interview Guide for tips.