Product Manager - New Vertical (ex-founder or ex-private equity)

Kovo•,

6d•$180,000 - $270,000•Remote

About The Position

Kovo is hiring a Product Manager to build and run a new consumer financial product vertical for people who are low-income, subprime, or underserved by traditional finance. The role will work directly with the founders and the person responsible for legal and compliance, helping evaluate candidate verticals and then take the selected product from prototype through launch and growth. Before a vertical is selected, the Product Manager will prototype candidate products in sandbox environments, speak with customers, research partners, and model unit economics such as customer acquisition cost payback, loss rates, and margins. The role will present a recommendation and supporting evidence to the founders. After selection, the Product Manager will design the smallest-footprint compliant offering, reuse Kovo’s existing identity, payments, credit reporting, and customer-base capabilities where possible, and build and launch an initial version to a segment of existing customers. The Product Manager will own the vertical’s direction, metrics, integrations, and growth, including its north star, roadmap, quarterly plans, and cross-sell offer with Kovo’s credit builder vertical. This is a high-ownership, fully remote role reporting to one of Kovo’s founders, who is based in Austin, Texas. Austin is a plus but is not required. The position emphasizes hands-on prototyping and building alongside engineering rather than backlog management or delegating work that the Product Manager can do directly.

Requirements

Founder, co-founder, or founding engineer experience with end-to-end product ownership; alternatively, experience in private equity, growth equity, credit investing, or strategic finance followed by an early operator role at a fintech building a business line.
Experience taking a consumer product from zero to one.
Consumer fintech experience in lending, payments, cash advance, banking, cards, or a similar area.
Experience working inside a bank or lending partnership program.
Ability to build prototypes and use agents heavily while maintaining a high quality bar.
Ability to pull and interpret numbers using SQL and product analytics.
Clear, concise writing that enables people to act on a message after one read.
Comfort working in a high-intensity, fully remote role with full ownership and little scaffolding.
Strong interest in building a regulated consumer product and expanding financial access for underserved people.

Nice To Haves

Recently shipped production code in TypeScript, React, or similar; AI-assisted development counts.
Based in Austin, Texas.

Responsibilities

Prototype candidate verticals in sandbox environments and test them with real customers.
Model customer acquisition cost payback, loss rates, and margins for candidate verticals.
Present a clear recommendation and supporting evidence to the founders.
Work with legal and compliance to design a product that achieves the customer outcome with as few licenses and obligations as possible.
Reuse Kovo’s existing identity, payments, credit reporting, and customer-base capabilities where possible.
Build and ship the first version, including customer flows, integrations, events, and experiments; use agents heavily.
Partner with backend engineering on the ledger, money movement, and other areas involving funds.
Work with design and frontend engineering on product polish and implementation.
Set the vertical’s north star, roadmap, and quarterly plans, and deliver against them.
Own the vertical’s conversion, losses, payback, and retention metrics.
Own the technical side of partner and vendor integrations.
Design a cross-sell offer between the new vertical and Kovo’s credit builder vertical.