---
title: 'Product Manager - Growth at Substack'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-growth-substack-san-francisco-6snn954wfsp8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Product Manager - Growth at Substack

- **Company:** Substack
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-06-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/substack/e93b56aa-d7ff-4a0f-90b8-1404e2d30da7

## Job description

## About Substack

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. Substack empowers independent writers, artists, videographers, podcasters, and creators of all types to create, share, and make a living off their work through subscriptions — offering them creative freedom, ownership, and a direct connection to their audiences. We're growing fast. Millions of readers come to Substack directly every month, and our app is the primary destination for our most engaged users. We're looking for a rare hybrid — someone who thinks like a product manager, works closely with engineers, and has deep expertise in the organic growth levers that compound over time: SEO, ASO, and new user onboarding.

## The Role

This is a new role on the Growth team, focused on growing the entire Substack ecosystem. You'll own product-led growth across both sides of our network: helping more creators successfully launch and grow, helping more readers discover and engage with great work, and converting more of that engagement into paid subscriptions. You'll report to the Head of Growth and work primarily with the Activation engineering team, in close partnership with Data, Growth Marketing, Creator Experience, and other product teams. Your scope will span new user app acquisition, reader onboarding and activation, payer funnels, and creator onboarding and activation. You'll identify the highest-leverage opportunities across these connected journeys and turn them into durable growth loops that strengthen the ecosystem as a whole. This is a product management role for someone who can move fluidly between strategy and execution. You'll diagnose funnel constraints, build a clear roadmap, write crisp PRDs, partner closely with engineers and designers, and run experiments from idea through measurement. You should be equally comfortable improving an individual conversion step and reasoning about how creators, readers, and payers reinforce one another across the network.

## What You'll Do

Consumer Growth

- Build and improve product loops that bring new readers into the Substack app through sharing, referrals, creator distribution, content discovery, and other scalable channels
- Own the consumer journey from first touch through app install, account creation, onboarding, engagement, and early retention
- Improve payer funnels, helping more engaged readers discover publications they value, understand the benefits of subscribing, and become long-term paid subscribers
- Partner with Growth Marketing, Data, Design, and Engineering on acquisition strategy, attribution, experimentation, and campaign-to-product handoffs

Creator Growth

- Own the creator journey from initial intent through publication setup, launch, onboarding, activation, and early retention
- Identify the behaviors that predict creator success and build experiences that help more creators reach those milestones quickly
- Improve creator growth loops across audience import, sharing and referrals, reader conversion, paid offering setup, and pathways from publishing to earning
- Partner across Creator Experience, Partnerships, Growth Marketing, Data, Design, and Engineering to diagnose funnel constraints, run experiments, and build a holistic creator growth roadmap

## What We're Looking For

- An ambitious, founder-type product manager with 5–8 years of experience
- Comfort with ambiguity: you can find structure in an unclear problem, form a strong point of view, and move from strategy to execution without waiting for perfect information
- The curiosity and analytical depth to go very deep on a problem, understand its underlying mechanics, and keep pushing until you've found the highest-leverage solution
- Experience working on multi-sided marketplaces, networks, or ecosystems, with a strong intuition for how to create value for and balance the needs of different participants
- Familiarity with Substack, alignment with our mission, and a thoughtful perspective on media, publishing, and the creator economy
- Ideally, experience across both early-stage startups and larger companies, bringing the rigor and craft of the latter while operating with the speed, resourcefulness, and scrappiness of the former
- Strong product judgment and communication skills, with the ability to earn trust and align engineering, design, data, and cross-functional partners around a clear direction

## Why This Role, Why Now

Substack's opportunity is bigger than any single funnel. Every successful creator brings distinctive work and an audience; every engaged reader creates more opportunity for creators; and every paid subscription strengthens the entire ecosystem. We have meaningful scale on both sides of the network, but many of the product loops connecting creator success, reader growth, and paid conversion are still underdeveloped. We're now investing in a dedicated Growth team to improve those loops end to end. That means making it easier for promising creators to start and reach activation, helping new users quickly find value in the app, creating better paths from engagement to payment, and building acquisition mechanics that compound through the network. You'll have a close partnership with the Activation engineering team, access to data, and a broad mandate across creator and consumer growth. If you're a product-shaped growth leader who wants to build the systems that turn creators into thriving publishers, readers into engaged users, and engagement into sustainable revenue, this is the role.

## Compensation

Substack's compensation package includes a market-competitive salary, equity for all full-time roles, and exceptional benefits. Our cash compensation range for this role is $190,000–$230,000. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise. 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. 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. Please see our Privacy Notice for details regarding Substack's collection and use of personal information relating to the application and recruitment process by clicking [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UjmY1acxnd27iIde83PxR7XdecR29aIyfkkmEOwAMGY/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.a0wuzmt3mjmm).

## About Substack

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Substack provides a platform for independent writers, podcasters, and creators to publish, build audiences, and earn revenue directly through paid subscriptions.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (with a new office in New York City)
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Chris Best (CEO), Jairaj Sethi (CTO), Hamish McKenzie (CWO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Media, Publishing, Creator Economy, SaaS
- Target customers: Individual writers, podcasters, video creators, independent publishers, media companies, experts, and educators (B2C and B2B)
- Mission or purpose statement: "To build a new economic engine for culture — empowering writers, creators, and publishers to own their work, own their audience, and earn directly from their ideas."

## Products & Services
- **Publishing Platform**: A full-featured CMS and writing tool designed for longform content, with support for posts, newsletters, scheduling, and media embedding.
- **Substack App**: A mobile and web app that connects readers with creators, featuring discovery tools like recommendations, Notes, trending topics, and leaderboards.
- **Native Podcasting**: Built-in recording studio and live video capabilities, with automatic distribution to Substack, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, including premium episode options.
- **Payments & Subscription Management**: Handles all billing, subscriber management, and revenue tools (welcome sequences, win-back campaigns, analytics). Creators keep 90% of revenue minus credit card fees.
- **Community Tools**: Subscriber chats, comment threads, and moderation features to turn publications into communities.
- **Substack Defender**: Legal support program providing publishers access to legal fees, advice, and pre-publication review for defamation, trademark, and copyright issues.
- **Network Discovery**: Built-in growth engine where more than half of new subscribers come from within Substack’s network, including recommendations and collaborations.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (last raised $100M in Series C in July 2025)
- **Key Metric**: Over 5 million paid subscriptions across the network; more than 30% of paid subscriptions come from within Substack’s network; tens of millions of posts discovered daily in the app.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz, BOND, The Chernin Group (TCG); part of Y Combinator’s winter 2018 batch.
- **Growth Signals**: Raised $100M Series C in July 2025; team has grown to over 100 people across the US, Canada, and UK; opened a new New York City office; top writers earn millions annually.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Creator-first economic model**: Writers keep 90% of revenue, own their audience and content, and can leave anytime with no platform fees or contracts.
- **Built-in network effects**: More than half of new subscribers come from within the platform’s discovery tools, reducing the need for creators to build audiences from scratch.
- **All-in-one platform**: Combines publishing, payments, growth tools, analytics, podcasting, video, and community management — no technical expertise required.
- **Legal support**: Substack Defender provides unique legal protection that reduces risk for independent publishers.
- **Brand trust and ecosystem**: A recognized leader in the creator economy with a strong network of high-profile writers and millions of paying subscribers.

## Strategic Focus
- Expanding the platform beyond newsletters into a full "media app" for all creator formats (writing, podcasting, video, live content).
- Growing the network effect through recommendations, Notes, and app-driven discovery to reduce customer acquisition costs for creators.
- Scaling the enterprise offering for media companies and full newsrooms.
- Deepening community features to increase subscriber engagement and retention.
- Building out the New York City office to expand talent and presence on the East Coast.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Small but growing team (100+ people) with a strong mission-driven focus on empowering creators and independent culture. Every employee participates in customer support to build empathy with users.
- **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: Hybrid model; employees can work from San Francisco HQ, the new New York office, or remotely across the US, Canada, and UK.
- **Benefits**: 100% premium coverage for employees and dependents (health care), fully funded HRA plans, generous parental leave, monthly internet/phone stipend, flexible vacation, 12 paid holidays, and a winter office shutdown between Christmas Eve and New Year’s.
- **Engineering Culture**: Pragmatic approach to problem-solving, shipping high-quality products; team works on a platform that directly impacts millions of creators and subscribers.
- **Perks**: Home office customization allowance, internet stipends, and a strong emphasis on work-life balance with flexible time off.

## Sources
1. [substack.com/about](https://substack.com/about)
2. [substack.com/jobs](https://substack.com/jobs)
3. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/substack](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/substack)
4. [builtin.com/company/substack](https://builtin.com/company/substack)
5. [linkedin.com/company/substack](https://www.linkedin.com/company/substack)

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