Director of Product, The Athletic
Growth
$170-190k
Subscription based publisher of sports content
Job no longer available
Subscription based publisher of sports content
501-1000 employees
Job no longer available
$170-190k
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To produce smarter coverage for die-hard fans and redefine the way fans get access to sports content by flipping the normal model for sports journalism.
Role
Who you are
- 4+ years of highly relevant product leadership experience including a team or functional leadership role
- Clear strategic strengths, from goal setting to strategy development to communication and reporting
- Expertise in consumer digital products
- Executional capabilities including cross-functional initiative leadership - you need to get things done in addition to guide the work
- Demonstrated experience being a people manager your team learns from and is excited to work with
- High familiarity with and love for sports and journalism
- Excellence with data - analyzing data, deriving insights, and making data-driven decisions
- Experience developing great user experiences, and an ability to empathize with users
- Eagerness to try new things and learn - and a willingness to fail
What the job involves
- Product plays a pivotal role at The Athletic, spearheading critical cross-functional initiatives and leading teams of engineers, designers, marketers, and analysts to execute seamlessly on behalf of the business and our users
- As a Director of Product, you will be a key strategic and operational leader, partnering closely with company executives and leading a team of Product Managers
- This is an advanced role, and you will be critical to the success of the Product organization and company at large
- You will report to the VP of Product
- The primary focus is on driving subscription growth
- Key areas of subscription growth include driving new audience to The Athletic, bringing them back on platform for continued engagement or re-activation, converting them to subscribers, and preventing subscription churn
- There may be other areas of ownership within our Subscription or Commercial strategies
- Your work will span off-platform (e.g., email), on-platform messaging and conversion touchpoints, and on-platform engagement features
- The job is to improve the overall user experience, with the goal of helping users move down the subscription funnel, with influence across the product experience
- Own the strategy and roadmap for 1 or more product areas
- Define the strategy and vision for your product area(s) to meet business objectives
- Leverage existing expertise in your domain area(s) (e.g., Subscriber Engagement and Retention) and a clear understanding of user needs and the competitive landscape
- Partner closely on strategy and execution with tech executives across product, design, engineering, data, marketing, and the newsroom
- Own a multi-team roadmap that balances long term and short term considerations
- Drive impact
- Lead large cross-functional working group(s) on key strategic initiatives
- Work closely with the rest of the Product team to align initiatives and dependencies
- Report on impact and learnings to key executive stakeholders
- Lead a team of Product Managers
- Develop the careers of your direct report Product Managers
- Foster a highly collaborative and productive environment
- Inform the work of other teams through direct and indirect mechanisms, including mentoring other PM colleagues as appropriate
- Improve organizational operations
- Work closely with other tech leaders on operational improvements
- Invest smartly in platforms and processes to ship and experiment at scale
Our take
The Athletic provides authentic, in-depth coverage written by journalists who know the teams they write about inside out. Its model bucks the trend of traditional sports journalism outfits by asking for a subscription rather than relying on ad-revenue.
Despite initial doubts that users would be willing to pay for sports journalistic content, the Athletic has found significant success and was acquired by the New York times in 2022.
This collaboration was criticised at the time by investors who believed that the Athletic was undersold. However, despite The Athletic operating at a loss since the takeover, it's clear that the New York Times perceives the subscription magazine as a long-term investment, predicting that it will be operating at a profit within the next 4 years. This will be aided by accelerated customer growth and the growing trend of subscription-based sports news.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Jan 2020
$50m
SERIES D
May 2019
$21.8m
SERIES C
Total funding: $139.5m
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Adam Hansmann
(President & Co-Founder)Previously a McKinsey Business Analyst and then Associate at Calera Capital.
Alex Mather
(CEO & Co-Founder)Vice President at startup building a community for athletes called Strava before founding The Athletic
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