Senior Product Manager

About the Role:

As an early team member, you will help set the strategy and execution for product development. We are looking to find a PM to drive the product roadmap, define product specs, drive product sprints, and build a winning team and processes. WATS is a climate tech startup decarbonizing businesses with waste operations software. WATS is solving for a $100M serviceable market - climate tech is a $1.5 trillion dollar industry. 

You will work directly with our founding team to deliver a software solution that meets a business's needs on its journey to manage its waste sustainably while reducing its costs and carbon. This role will require you to collaborate effectively with engineering, design, and other functions in the organization. WATS has raised a pre-seed round and is looking for a PM who is very capable and energized by early-stage company building. If you love building processes and delightful software and have a passion for sustainability, we would love to hear from you.

About WATS: 

We are a climate tech startup building innovative software to enable and optimize Waste Management operations within businesses of all sizes. We will stop at nothing to ensure that WATS is the platform for businesses to solve all their waste management needs.  

WATS helps businesses streamline their waste operations, report on carbon impacts, and comply with shifting environmental regulations. WATS is led by two female co-founders (Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli and Laura Rosenshine) with over 2 decades of experience in the commercial waste industry with a focus on delivering zero waste solutions in New York City. They are building a SaaS solution that solves the pain points at the intersection of commercial waste management and sustainability. The United States has finally stepped up with monumental climate legislation, and the time to act is now.

Meredith and Laura are die-hard zero waste experts and highly motivated to do everything in their power to make WATS a major part of the solution businesses need to change their procedures so that they handle their waste as sustainably as possible.

In 2022 WATS was a participant in the Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator. In February of 2023 WATS  completed the MassChallenge Decarbonization Accelerator, and in May of 2023 WATS closed their pre-seed round of venture capital funding.

Your Responsibilities:

• Collaborate on product strategy, OKRs, and roadmap with the cofounders
• Optimize strategy/roadmap against our company goals of (a) achieving product market fit and (b) sustainable revenue growth in the face of new information. (What is the 1% of the broader product vision we should focus on now to unlock our next phase of growth?) Ensure our product & go-to-market (sales) strategies are aligned. Create buy-in around clear, appropriately scoped product goals. Identify roadmap scope & risks with stakeholders (especially Eng.) and counter-measures, where possible, to reduce scope or risk.
• Own day-to-day product execution, including sprint management and prioritization.  Ensure a high-quality bar and optimal product development lifecycle, and that features are well-adopted by customers.
• Define product specs. Clearly identify the problem we’re solving, why it matters, and how we will measure success. Define clear problem boundaries and mind dependencies to balance (a) shipping early and often and (b) delivering tangible value and product learnings with each launch. Partner early with eng & design to identify optimal solutions and minimize risks.
• Drive a learning roadmap of questions and hypotheses to validate, in order to de-risk our roadmap. Manage appropriate discovery work: sales calls, customer calls, data pulls, market / competitive research, and technical research. Nimbly synthesize learnings and adjust our product strategy/roadmap appropriately. Develop a deep understanding of our users' problems through research.
• Build a winning Product process & culture. Foster a culture of ownership and orientation around outcomes (not output). Continually identify & implement opportunities to improve our process.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience working in Product Management, ideally in a B2B environment
• You are outcome-oriented, not output-oriented.
• You have a bias towards action. At this scale, we need to move incredibly fast while holding a high bar for quality. You should be comfortable thinking scrappy, doing things that don’t scale, and minding the 80/20% to drive desired outcomes.
• You have sufficient experience to act from intuition, not just data. We’re at a stage where we don’t generally have enough data to paint a clear picture. You need to know what questions to ask and know when you’ve seen enough to move forward - including on big, strategic decisions like road mapping or key build/buy initiatives.
• You have owned a product from soup to nuts, and being responsible for both product market fit and commercial success.
• Have curiosity, empathy, and passion for the problem space. The team is incredibly passionate about waste management and sustainability, and we want to hold on to that.
• You don’t need to have a prior interest in waste, but you should excel at active listening, empathy for our users, and genuine excitement for the problem space. 

Nice to have:

• Experience working with complex & often poorly structured data, and serving multiple customer and end-user personas

Work Authorization: This is a full-time role and not open for visa sponsorship - the individual must be a permanent resident or citizen of Canada or the United States.

Annual Salary and terms: 

• $165,000-$200,000
• Equity award equivalent to 0.15-0.5% 
• This role comes with 3 weeks of PTO, 7 sick days, and company holidays 

Location: New York City, preferred, or remote for the right candidate, our organization operates on an EST work schedule.

To apply: Preference for applicant to use ClimateBase, alternative option to send a resume to richard@gutter.cc. Your resume should have your name in the document title. Cover letter is optional but welcome. Please include your name and the job title in the subject line. Looking for the perfect applicant ASAP, this job was posted on August 1st, 2023. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis until the job is filled.

WATS is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.