Director of Product Management

LawnStarter•San Francisco Bay Area, CA

1d•Remote

About The Position

LawnStarter is seeking its first Director of Product Management to lead a team of three Product Managers. This role is positioned between the VP of Product and the PMs, with the primary goal of delivering value across growth, retention, and profitability by building an excellent product for both customers and service providers (Pros). The Director will be instrumental in scaling the company from one profitable vertical to multiple, while also enhancing the core lawn service offering. This is a unique opportunity to define the team's operating model and the standards of product craft, rather than inheriting an existing structure. The role requires a systems-thinking approach due to the complex, interconnected nature of a marketplace where decisions have ripple effects across customers, Pros, and the business. The Director will act as a player-coach, multiplying the efforts of a strong existing team and driving extraordinary outcomes through both strategic initiatives and patient optimization.

Requirements

AI-native and agent-curious, using AI daily and encouraging the team to do the same.
Belief in agents as the next platform shift and enthusiasm for exploring what an agent-driven world means for LawnStarter.
Ability to get extraordinary outcomes from already-strong people through coaching, raising the bar, and unblocking.
Willingness to do the hardest work yourself when necessary.
Systems thinking: ability to see inputs, rules, feedback loops, and second-order effects, considering both customer and Pro perspectives as a connected machine.
Ruthless prioritization: ability to say no effectively, sequence work, kill good-but-not-now projects, and protect team focus.
Strong cross-functional partnership: ability to earn trust from design, engineering, data, finance, and ops by speaking their language and making respected decisions.
Obsession with scoping and user experience: ability to cut scope to the essential and focus on how the product feels to use.
Experience in a marketplace environment is highly desirable.
Experience in product management, particularly in a leadership or senior role.

Nice To Haves

Experience in the home services industry.
Experience with AI and agent-native product development.
Experience building and scaling multi-service platforms.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and multiply three already-strong PMs, and hire more as the team grows.
Own the growth/retention/profitability tradeoffs on a shared roadmap, determining what gets built, what waits, and what is eliminated.
Develop a repeatable playbook for expanding from one to multiple services, designing for customers and Pros as a unified system.
Own the integration of AI and agents into product development for internal teams, customers, and Pros.
Serve as the trusted product leader for cross-functional teams, making respected decisions.
Abstract a single product into a multi-service platform, addressing service-specific economics, quality signals, and Pro workflows.
Determine which aspects of services can be generalized and which must remain service-specific, sequencing development for a second profitable vertical.
Prioritize across growth, retention, and profitability with finite engineering capacity, managing tradeoffs and saying no clearly and often.
Develop and implement a strategy for building products that utilize and serve AI agents.
Ensure the team ships at a higher ceiling, achieving better outcomes, sharper scoping, and faster delivery.
Drive measurable progress in growth, retention, and profitability without sacrificing one for the others.
Advance the second vertical (pool cleaning) towards profitability at scale, creating a repeatable playbook for future verticals.
Improve the quality of the core service and develop a clear plan with the growth team to capture AI-driven channels.
Establish a clear roadmap for an agent-driven world, initiating the first strategic bets.