Product Manager at Inkitt in San Francisco

Job description

• We run four consumer products and we are hiring product managers for all of them.
• Galatea — serialized fiction, millions of readers, coins and subscription
• CandyJar — the #1 US-based microdrama platform, billions of episodes streamed
• Ironblood — our new AI-native streaming platform for action and adventure
• Inkitt — the writing and discovery platform underneath all of it, where the stories come from
• We decide which one you own at the point you start, not at the point you apply. When you join, we look at where the largest metric gap is across the portfolio and put you there. As the team grows, areas get reshuffled — people move to where the biggest problem is.
• We are telling you this up front because it is a real feature of working here, and because it does not suit everyone. If you want to own one named surface for three years, this is the wrong company. Some of our strongest product managers were hired for one thing and were doing something else entirely within a year — including one who was brought in to build internal tooling and ended up launching CandyJar from zero.
• This role works differently from most product jobs, and the difference matters more than anything else on this page.
• Ali, our founder and CEO, sets company priorities. You own the ideas. You will own an app or area end to end, and you will spend part of every day researching competitors, the industry and our users to generate new feature ideas. Every product manager here keeps a live Top 3 list of the highest-impact ideas for their area — a new idea only enters that list by beating one already on it.
• You pitch ideas to Ali on a single slide with a rough impact calculation attached. He rejects the ones that will not move the number enough to justify building them. That happens often, to everyone, and it is not a signal that anything has gone wrong.
• Once an idea is approved, you own execution: spec, design, engineering, launch, and the A/B test. You release and ramp tests on your own judgement. Four weeks after launch, every feature is reviewed against the impact you predicted before you built it.
• Your performance is measured on exactly two things: how often you beat your own Top 3, and the realised impact of what you ship.
• If that sounds like the job you want, the rest of this page is for you.
• Generates ideas rather than waiting for them
• Brings solutions instead of problems
• Data driven — and does the analysis themselves
• Quick to action
• Takes direct feedback well and gives it
• Comfortable being measured against their own forecast
• Happy to be moved to wherever the biggest problem is
• Looking for exponential career growth
• Have lots of fun building a generational AI x Entertainment company

Responsibilities

• Own an app or area end to end — the roadmap, the backlog, the revenue and retention of it
• Generate the ideas. Research competitors, the market and our users daily, and keep a ranked Top 3 that you are constantly trying to beat
• Build the impact case before you build the feature: size the opportunity, show the maths, defend the number
• Pitch to Ali, take the rejection, sharpen it, come back
• Drive approved work through spec, design, engineering, QA and launch
• Design and run A/B tests, ramp them responsibly, and read the results honestly — including when you lost
• Publish what you learn, wins and losses alike, to the whole company
• Hit the impact you predicted

Requirements

• 4–10 years of professional experience. We do not require a set number of years with the title “product manager.” Several of our strongest PMs arrived with one to three, and one of our best had none at all.
• At least one role, in any function, in a business where money changed hands frequently and directly — subscriptions, in-app purchases, payments, pricing, marketplaces, live operations, lifecycle marketing. We care that you have seen how revenue actually behaves, not that you have the product vocabulary for it. Analysts, BD, CRM, payments operations and growth marketers are all welcome here.
• Numbers you produce yourself. You can size an opportunity, build the model, and write the SQL or the spreadsheet underneath it. You do not wait for an analyst to tell you whether something worked.
• Evidence you have moved toward the product rather than the title — a lateral or downward title move to get closer to building something, or two or three functions inside one company.
• Something you started that nobody asked you to start. A side project, a club, a process, a business, a team you created because it needed to exist.
• Shipped work with numbers attached. Tell us what moved and by how much.
• Consumer product instinct and real UX judgement.
• Based in San Francisco. This role is five days a week onsite.
• Nice to have: free-to-play games, serialized fiction, short-form video, audio or another high-frequency consumer content business; coins, virtual currency, offer design or live operations; mobile; a founder or first-employee stint.

Skills

Required

• Product management
• End-to-end ownership
• Idea generation
• Competitive research
• Market research
• User research
• Impact sizing
• Data analysis
• SQL
• Spreadsheet modeling
• A/B testing
• UX judgment

Preferred

• Free-to-play games
• Serialized fiction
• Short-form video
• Audio
• High-frequency consumer content business
• Coins
• Virtual currency
• Offer design

Benefits

• 401k plan, designed to help you save for the future
• Health benefits tailored to your needs, including medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Professional coaching for everyone
• Team-building events, including our annual Tulum trip
• Unlimited access to our Galatea app and CandyJar app.
• Unlimited budget for self-development books
• Charity donation of your choice at your one year anniversary
• Free lunch in office everyday
• Class Pass membership for US based employee and gym access for Berlin employees
• Dog-friendly offices in Berlin and San Francisco
• $150,000 - $190,000 a year
• Salary offers are determined based on the candidate’s experience, skills, and alignment with the requirements of the role, as well as internal equity and market benchmarks
• We are open to hiring this role at either Staff or Principal level. The posted range spans both. We calibrate level during the interview process based on the scope you have owned, and we will tell you where we have landed before we make an offer.