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About the Company

Founded in 2018 with a small group of engineers, our client recognized that the convergence of data with powerful emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning would pave the way for major disruption and value creation that exceeded the digital transformation of the past 20 years.

Today, our client is a diverse team of engineers, data scientists, product managers, and business operators who have spent the past two years building a team and deep technology IP and (pre-seed & seed) product portfolio.

After many great accomplishments and many interesting challenges, our client is expanding its leadership team and looking for an experienced product executive to partner with our SVP of Innovation to grow and shape the future of our client and its product portfolio.

The Role

As Managing Director, Product & Growth you will oversee product, user experience and growth marketing functions within the venture group. Reporting to the SVP of Innovation, this is innovation’s most senior product role and is a strategic leadership role as our client looks to scale its product portfolio and team.

The MD of Product & Growth works closely with our engineers and data scientists to guide products from conception to launch, and with our broader business partners to generate profitable revenue growth streams.

As you bridge technical and business worlds, you lead the design of products and technologies with creatives and engineers and then zoom out to drive the go-to-market activities.

You have a bias for action and can break down complex problems into steps that drive product development at speed. As MD of Product and Growth, you will be a part of shaping our client’s future.

Key Competencies

• Team Development

The single most important responsibility of the MD of Product & Growth is to develop a strong team of product managers, designers and growth managers. Developing great people requires a different set of skills than developing great products, which means making recruiting, training and ongoing coaching your top priority. In this role, you should have a proven track record of developing others. Additionally, your track record must include identifying and recruiting potential talent, and then working actively and continuously with those people to encourage and support them to maintain high performance and further develop in their roles.

• Product & Growth Strategy

In order for a product team to actually be empowered and act with any meaningful degree of autonomy, the team must have a deep understanding of the broader context. This starts with a compelling product vision (inspirational), and the path to achieving that vision: the product strategy (intentional).

In this role – you must be able to create a clear product strategy that includes a strong understanding of: (i) who our customers really are, (ii) what it means to win in our market, (iii) how to differentiate as a product and company (iv) how to build compelling and remarkable products for our customers, and v) how to grow adoption through distribution and acquisition strategies

• Execution

No matter where the vision comes from, it won’t mean much if you can’t get the product idea from concept to life. As the MD of Product & Growth, you know how to get things done and have absolutely proven your ability to do so.

To succeed in this role, you must be an expert on modern forms of product planning, customer discovery, product discovery, and product development process. But execution also means that you know how to work effectively and collaboratively as part of a broader team and organization.

As MD of Product & Growth, you must have strong stakeholder management and communication skills. The product leader must be able to inspire and motivate the team and the broader organization to help stay aligned and be working towards the same goals.

• Product Culture

Good product organizations have a strong team, a well-defined vision and can consistently execute. A great product organization adds the dimension of a strong product culture. A strong product culture means that the team understands the importance of continuous and rapid testing and learning. They understand that they need to make mistakes in order to learn, but they need to make them quickly and mitigate the risks. They understand the need for continuous innovation. They know that great products are the result of true collaboration. They respect and value their data scientists and engineers. They understand the power of a motivated product team.

As MD of Product & Growth, you understand the importance of a strong product culture, and will be able to give real examples of your own experiences with product culture and have concrete plans for instilling this culture at our client. You will be able to facilitate and create the growth and development of this culture and mindset within your team to help enable their success.

Key Responsibilities

• Think strategically and articulate strategy – In partnership with the leadership team, developing the product roadmap and growth strategy, driving both high product quality and innovation;
• Foster Venture’s values and culture, and set a visible standard for outstanding performance;
• Recruit experienced product managers who have overseen multiple stages of the lifecycle of high use products;
• Lead, motivate, mentor, and inspire a team of talented product managers, designers and growth marketers – create learning and career paths for each of your direct reports;
• Ensure the product and design teams deliver a seamless product experience for the products customers, and iteratively improve that experience;
• Leverage data in the product development lifecycle to drive more predictability in the business (growth, customer retention, etc.);
• Set product management and growth processes – develop processes needed to run product development efficiently. Ensure adoption of these processes by the broader team;
• Implement best practices to drive efficient product development processes that leverage cross-functional collaboration and input;
• Financial Acumen: prioritize capital allocation, resources and decisions to launch products seamlessly and within budget;
• Represent Venture’s product portfolio at the executive level (SVP, C-suite and Board).

Skills and Experience

• Experience in scaling high growth / high tech (Growth <> Series A stage) companies, ideally with experience reporting into a Founding CEO;
• 5-7+ years of digital product leadership expertise;
• Has mentored and guided the careers of product managers (and ideally designers) in the past;
• Familiarity with raising venture capital (seed to growth staged capital);
• Knowledge of SaaS / Consumer / Platform business models;
• Has led products used by non-technical users. Strong user empathy and understanding of best in class user experience;
• Experienced at product led growth “go-to-market” strategies;
• Deep PM fundamentals and expertise. Has the ability to drive effective development processes and level-up a product organization;
• Brings a data-driven approach to product management.
• Proven ability to work cross functionally with counterparts in engineering, data science, business development and marketing;
• Experience scaling product(s) from $1 million in revenue to $50 million;
• Experience with distributed + remote work environments;
• Ability to achieve strategic goals and evolve product strategy based on research, data and industry trends in an innovative and fast-paced environment;
• Experience developing metrics and using data to quantify project success or failure over the long-term.

Compensation

The selected candidate will receive an attractive compensation package consisting of base salary, bonus, and equity, along with a comprehensive benefits plan.

If interested, please contact:

Sal Rocco StoneWood Group Bus: 416-365-9494 Ext. 233 [email protected]

Natália Scodino StoneWood Group Bus: 416-365-9494 Ext. 221 [email protected]