Category Lead

Whatnot

$120K — $150K *
Retail & Consumer Goods
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 7+ years in client-facing roles, preferably in Strategy Consulting, Private Equity, or tech partnerships.
  • Experience managing and developing teams effectively.
  • Strong analytical skills, with ability to derive insights from data.
  • Excellent communicator, capable of tailoring messages to diverse audiences.
  • Proficiency in AI tools for problem-solving and execution.

Responsibilities

  • Define and execute strategic vision for category growth.
  • Lead cross-functional teams across Account Management, Sales, Marketing, and Partnerships.
  • Identify growth opportunities and collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Operations to implement solutions.
  • Cultivate relationships with top sellers and buyers to ensure product alignment with community needs.
  • Utilize metrics to guide team focus and measure success.

Benefits

  • Opportunity to work in a pivotal role within the organization.
  • Access to a supportive and collaborative team environment.
  • Chance to influence and shape the community's experience on the platform.
  • Flexible work arrangements to foster work-life balance.
Full Job Description
Role

You own the strategy, growth, and P&L for one of Whatnot's largest or highest growth categories. You set the strategic vision, decide where to invest, and pull the levers across Account Management, Sales, Marketing, Partnerships, and Product to hit it. This is one of the most pivotal seats on the CatEx team: you bring together everything across the org that lets a community thrive on the platform.
  • Define the strategy. Map the market, dig into the data, and talk to sellers and buyers to build a clear point of view on how to scale your category sustainably. Turn that into an action plan against the category's biggest opportunities and headwinds, and bring the right cross-functional partners along to execute it.
  • Lead the execution. Manage a team of direct and dotted-line reports across Account Management, Sales, Marketing, and Partnerships to onboard and grow sellers, activate influencers, and run community events. Source and close the highest-priority partnerships in the category. Own the metrics that define success (GMV, buyer/seller retention, etc.) and use them to prioritize key focus areas across your team.
  • Drive outsized growth. Identify the category unlocks and work cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Operations to ship the solutions that step-change growth. Propose and run tests with leadership to learn fast, and take on the biggest opportunities/risks as an IC.
  • Be the voice of your category. Build relationships with your top sellers and buyers, understand their perspectives, and ensure the product meets their needs. Carry our culture by coaching your team to deeply understand the business and product so they can pitch sellers and grow the community. Partner with other Category Leads to keep leveling up how the whole CatEx team executes.


You
  • People who do well at Whatnot tend to be comfortable figuring things out as they go, biased toward action, and genuinely curious about what they're building. They care more about outcomes than credit and stay close to the product and the people using it.
    • A passion for our mission: you live and breathe the needs of our communities and work relentlessly to improve their experience on Whatnot
    • 7+ years of experience working in a fast-paced, client-facing role in high-output environments, such as: Strategy Consulting, Private Equity, or partnerships at a fast-paced tech company
    • A player/coach who gets in the weeds: scrappy, comfortable in a highly ambiguous environment, and no job is too small
    • A proven leader who has managed and developed a team
    • Deeply analytical and comfortable manipulating data to find and act on business insight
    • Strong communicator who can frame and explain insight for a variety of audiences
    • Fluency with AI tools to sharpen problem-solving, analysis, and execution across a wide range of business challenges

    Nice to Have
    • Experience working on a marketplace or a two-sided platform
    • Experience or passion for buying and selling in online marketplace communities
    • Proficiency with SQL & dashboards


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