The posting
About givestar
givestar is building the next generation of charitable giving. Our platform is designed to make fundraising more social, engaging and rewarding for the people raising money, the charities they support, and the events that bring them together.
While many of the world's established fundraising platforms were built more than two decades ago, givestar was created around how people use technology today: mobile-first, connected and community-driven.
And we're well beyond the idea stage.
givestar has already helped raise around $70m for charity, built a community of approximately 750,000 users, and works with major charities and fundraising events. With around 10,000 new users joining each week, the foundations are in place for the next stage of growth.
Following a $12m Series A, we're now moving from startup to scale-up. We're investing across our leadership, product, engineering and commercial teams, while accelerating our expansion into the US.
We work on a hybrid basis, with the team typically spending 2–3 days a week together in our London office.
About the role
Our product sits in the middle of several groups who all need a great experience: charities, event partners, fundraisers and donors. That makes this a multi-sided product, closer to B2B2C, marketplace and network problems than to a simple single-user tool.
We're hiring our first Head of Product in the UK to lead that product. We're looking for someone who has already shipped this kind of work, stays close to customers, and works as a true partner to engineering so good ideas become software people actually use.
As our first Head of Product, you'll have a lot of scope to shape the product direction as givestar grows. You'll help us make good choices about where to focus, balancing what our customers need, where the commercial opportunities are and what's technically possible.
While the role is UK - based, we're also growing our presence in the US. You'll help us work out where the biggest opportunities are across both markets and balance those priorities as part of a global roadmap.
What you'll be doing
Product direction
- Own the product journey from discovery through to release.
- Set a clear product direction and make sure the wider team understands what we're building and why.
- Turn competing customer, commercial and technical needs into clear priorities and a roadmap the team can deliver.
- Balance opportunities across the UK and US as we grow in both markets.
- Set clear goals and use product performance data to help us understand what's working and where we need to improve.
The product
- Set direction across the charity, event partner, fundraiser and donor experiences.
- Work through the trade-offs that come with a B2B2C, marketplace and network product.
- Make sure the different parts of the product work well together rather than becoming separate experiences.
Customers
- Keep close to our customers and understand how people are actually using givestar.
- Use customer insight and real product usage to help guide the decisions we make.
Working with engineering and design
- Build a strong working relationship with engineering and design.
- Give the team clear priorities and make decisions that help keep things moving.
- Work together from early ideas and discovery through to getting useful software into people's hands.
- Use what we learn after launch to inform what we do next.
Growing the product team
- Help shape how product works at givestar as we move from startup to scale-up.
- Keep product, engineering and the wider company connected on what we're building and why.
- Coach and support the people around you and help grow the product function as givestar grows.
What we're looking for
- Experience taking meaningful product work all the way from idea to production, rather than owning only one part of a much larger programme.
- Experience working with B2B2C, marketplace and/or network products, where different user groups rely on one another.
- Product leadership experience in SaaS or similarly complex software, and an understanding of how to balance product depth, integrations and focus.
- Experience working in a business scaling from Series A towards Series B, with an understanding of what it takes to build and scale a product function through that stage of growth.
- A customer-led approach and a track record of using customer insight to make better product decisions.
- A strong track record of working closely and effectively with engineering and design teams.
- Good judgement when it comes to prioritisation, particularly when there are more opportunities than there is capacity to deliver them.
It would be great if you also have:
- Experience hiring, managing and developing Product Managers.
- Experience managing a small engineering or delivery team.
- Experience in fundraising, fintech, events or another mission-driven platform.
Why givestar?
givestar is at a really interesting point in its growth. There's already a product in market, a large and growing community using it, and plenty still to build.
For our Head of Product, that means joining at a stage where you'll have real influence over the product, the team and how we work as we grow.
If you're looking for a product leadership role where you can stay close to customers, work alongside engineering and help shape what comes next, we'd love to hear from you.
