General Manager (Owner-Operator), Above Ground Coffee

$30-40k

Compensation: Salary: $30,000-$40,000 year (lean, founder-style). Equity: 5% of company equity per year, time-based vesting with performance milestones. Perks: Unlimited coffee, tastings/travel as needed, direct mentorship from the founder.

Junior and Mid level

New York

1 day a week in office (Bushwich Brooklyn)

A curated monthly coffee subscription roasted in Brooklyn

Open for applications

A curated monthly coffee subscription roasted in Brooklyn

1-20 employees

RetailFoodConsumer Goods

Open for applications

$30-40k

Junior and Mid level

New York

1 day a week in office (Bushwich Brooklyn)

1-20 employees

RetailFoodConsumer Goods

Company mission

To elevate your coffee ritual with curated perfection.

Job

Company

Role

Who you are

Mission: Build the #1 high-end curated coffee subscription in the U.S. and get to 1,000 active subscribers fast
Reality check: You are the team. There are no other employees. We expect you to be scrappy and do all the unglamorous work yourself: roasting, packaging, labeling, shipping/receiving, inventory runs, café pop-ups, and customer support—alongside growth and brand
Who you are:
Ex-founder or solo DTC operator who likes doing the work, not outsourcing it
Taste + rigor: you care about product/packaging/story and sweat unit economics
Comfortable lifting boxes, early mornings, and tight ship windows; NYC-based/in-person
12-month success:
1,000 subs, CAC < $60, 3-mo retention ≥ 80%, churn ≤ 6%
Subscription GM ≥ 50%; two scalable acquisition channels + one partnership driving ≥25% of new subs
Ops SLA: orders out same/next business day, CSAT ≥ 4.8/5

What the job involves

Growth: Full DTC funnel, offers, referral loops, paid/creator, partnerships
Retention: Onboarding, CX, churn saves, community, upsell/cross-sell
Brand & Content: Calendars, shoots, tastings, email/SMS, socials, light design
Ops (hands-on): Roast coordination, QC cuppings, packaging & pick/pack, shipouts, supplier terms, basic FP&A, physical space and equipment upkeep
P&L: Forecasts, cohort dashboards, weekly KPI reviews (LTV/CAC, churn, GM%)

Application process

Short note + resume/LinkedIn sent to Kelly@severinhacker.com
Three bullets: biggest DTC win, hardest ops fix, fastest zero-to-one
2–3 min Loom walking through a growth or retention dashboard you built

Our take

Bringing coffee into the modern age, Above Ground is a premium coffee subscription service that offers a monthly batch of international blends. Each month, a new coffee batch is sent to subscribers, with past batches coming from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Rwanda and Colombia. In short, coffee-lovers get to try the blends of a new independent roaster each month, whilst the coffee makers benefit from heightened brand awareness.

It’s a novel idea that could build new communities around coffee. Founded by Duolingo co-founder Severin Hacker, Above Ground’s branding is distinctive and trendy, feeling well-placed as a New York start-up. Here’s to hoping the subscription service continues to grow and, in turn, elevate the brand awareness of independent coffee makers the world over.

Freddie

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Company

Company HQ

Bedford-Stuyvesant, NY

Leadership

Severin Hacker

(Founder)

Also the Co-Founder & CTO of Duolingo and was a Research Intern at Microsoft and received a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University.

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