PhD/Masters Playbook Product Manager Focused Founder in Training Program

2025 PhD/Masters Playbook Founder in Training Product Manager Program

Over the past 3 years we've had success with a very selective rotational program for elite graduates with a passion for sports and entrepreneurship. We're expanding the program this year to hire 2 graduates to focus on the implementation of our AI strategy. 

We are looking for people who

• PhD or Masters
• Have a deep passion for Product management
• Have an incredible ability to solve problems
• Have the ability to shape projects and manage teams working on multiple projects at once
• Have extreme curiosity
• Have a Bias for Action and a get things done mentality

Over 18 months you'll work directly under our CEO, CTO, Senior Product Manager, Director of Customer Success, and Development team. You'll be instrumental in shaping a new paradigm in how local sports, recreation, and activities can be managed and serviced. At the end of 18 months, you'll be promoted to a key role in the company that aligns with your strengths, interests, and career development interests. The program is designed for individuals that want to become a Product Manager in the future. You'll have extensive exposure to all aspects of Playbooks growth and development during an exciting and formative period. You'll be given significant responsibility on an accelerated basis and you'll be working with talented, like minded individuals within an amazing, sports obsessed culture.

What We Offer

• Vision and Upside - Playbook is building Shopify for sports and experience businesses. As we scale our 10,000s of businesses our product development team will continue to grow from our current 15 person team and we will need incredible product managers. You'll receive substantial options in Playbook vesting over 4 years. It's our conviction that you'll see continued growth in the value of these share over the coming years.
• Growth- Our goal is to build Playbook's reputation as an incredible place to launch your product management career. While we cannot match the compensation from a google or Amazon we can offer several things that are much more valuable. You will have a significant impact on a product that influences millions of end users lives immediately. You will be an early employee with a mission driven product team looking to profoundly shift the paradigm in which sports and experiences are experienced both by our business clients and their end users. You will have a major impact on improving communities, helping small businesses , and making communities more interactive and connected via sports and experience.

Our Program

• We follow a typical agile development process with some unique elements that have evolved over time. We over invest in analytics as well as qualitative customer feedback and we look for a strong ability to synthesize and learn from both data and qualitative signals. We consider ourselves uncompromising in terms of relying on rational analysis and a deep empathy with out users to guide our toughest decisions.

Responsibilities:

• Working alongside Product Directors across functional group projects
• Documenting jira tickets
• Researching product discovery and customer issues
• Working with project management tools
• Manage all developers and QA analysts on the raise and app teams, managing sprints, documenting processes, and overseeing quality assurance.
   
• Develop and execute quarterly product roadmaps for Playbook Software, leading the achievement of quarterly objectives.

Why You Should Be Interested:

Learning- As a part of your role you will be on multiple meetings per week with the CEO. Within our transparent culture, you will gain exposure to all parts of the business. You will also be working closely with small business owners and learn a tremendous amount from these relationships. If your ultimate goal is to start a business one day, our role is designed for you to reach that goal at an accelerated rate.

Accelerated Growth- We have a flat, meritocratic culture. Your insights and ideas will have the potential to shape the company on day one. There is no bureaucracy, politics, or blockers to your growth here. We have a track record of rapidly promoting exceptionally talented individuals. 

Financial Upside - We are generous with equity options and we are taking off like a rocket ship towards our mission of building Shopify for sports and community organizations. 

Sports- If you love sports, you'll love our culture. We have an incredible group of people that love sports here and sports are an instrumental part of our culture. Sportscasters and games are on in the office all day. We have monthly outings to VIP experiences at NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLS games.