Founding Product Lead New York City

Autumn is building the AI operating system for independent hotels. Hotels are still run on an extraordinarily fragmented stack of legacy software, agencies, spreadsheets, and manual workflows. We are building one AI native platform to automate that work, starting with the workflows closest to revenue, specifically digital marketing. The early sales motion is already working. Most of our growth to date has come from cold outbound, and we convert 85% of calls into customers with a one-call close because we're solving a true hair-on-fire problem. We recently raised the largest seed round in hotel tech history, led by Bessemer, and are building an exceptional team in person from our waterfront office in Williamsburg. The opportunity Help decide what Autumn should build, then own taking it from an unanswered question to a product customers use and value. As our first dedicated product hire, you'll report directly to the Founder & CEO and help shape our product vision and roadmap. You'll identify problems worth solving, develop a point of view on the right solutions, and work with engineering and design to bring them to life. Your ownership extends through launch, adoption, and measurable customer value. Our engineering team can ship quickly. You'll help ensure we're applying that capability to the most valuable opportunities. You'll also help Autumn anticipate where the market is going. We want someone who is deeply curious about AI and develops informed, independent opinions about how it will change hotel operations, the way travelers discover and book hotels, and the opportunities ahead for our business. You'll stay close to developments across AI and hotel technology, challenge our assumptions, and help us decide where to act. You'll have a close partnership with the founder and substantial room to act independently. We're looking for someone who can take an ambiguous problem, make sound decisions, bring others along, and stay accountable for the result. If you've founded a company, aspire to start one, or love figuring out what should exist and making it work, this is an opportunity to bring that energy to a business with real traction. What you'll own Finding problems worth solving. Spend time with hotel owners, customers, and prospects. Understand their workflows, uncover underlying needs, and identify where Autumn can deliver meaningful value. Understanding what's changing—and what it means for Autumn. Stay closely connected to the AI and hotel technology ecosystems: emerging products, competitors, founders, and new capabilities. Try tools firsthand, understand how the landscape is evolving, and turn that knowledge into clear recommendations about opportunities we should pursue, threats we should take seriously, and where we can build an advantage. Deciding what to build. Combine customer insights, market understanding, business priorities, and emerging AI capabilities into clear recommendations. Partner with the CEO to choose where we invest and what we defer. Turning ambiguity into a solution. Define the customer experience, scope, and success criteria. Use prototypes, customer testing, and clear product briefs to validate assumptions and give engineering the direction to move. Getting products into customers' hands. Work closely with engineering and design, make tradeoffs, resolve open questions, and carry the work through launch. Making what we ship successful. Understand whether customers adopt the product and get value from it. Identify barriers, drive improvements, and use evidence to decide what happens next. Who you are You combine curiosity and independent judgment with the drive to make things happen. You enjoy investigating a difficult question, but you're equally motivated to turn the answer into something people use. You bring: Product judgment. You can distinguish an interesting idea from a problem worth solving and make thoughtful decisions with incomplete information. Ownership from idea to outcome. You've taken a product or substantial initiative from an unclear starting point through launch and learned from what happened afterward. First-principles thinking. You challenge assumptions, ask incisive questions, and develop your own point of view. Deep curiosity and informed conviction about AI. You actively follow, experiment with, and form opinions about emerging AI capabilities. You can explain how they could change our customers' businesses and our own, distinguish meaningful shifts from hype, and update your views as new evidence emerges. An instinct to look beyond our walls. You want to know what competitors are building, what hotel owners are adopting, and what the broader technology ecosystem is learning. You seek out people, products, and ideas that sharpen your thinking and bring those insights into the team. Customer empathy and product taste. You understand people's underlying needs and can turn complex workflows into simple, useful experiences. Technical fluency. You work effectively with engineers, understand tradeoffs, and use AI tools to explore, test, and build. Clear communication. You make your reasoning understandable, write with precision, and help people align around decisions. Ambition, humility, and follow-through. You set a high bar, move with urgency, welcome better ideas, and stay accountable when the work gets difficult. There's no single background we're looking for. You may have founded a company, been an early product hire, or worked as a startup operator with direct responsibility for building and launching products. You don't need to have held a product title. What matters is evidence that you can identify a valuable problem, bring a solution to life, and make it work for customers. What success looks like You help Autumn make better decisions about what to build and take meaningful problems off the founder's plate. Engineering has clear direction, customers adopt what we launch, and the products you own deliver measurable value. You bring an informed perspective on where AI and hotel technology are heading, helping us recognize meaningful shifts early and turn them into practical decisions. You use what you learn from the market and our customers to make each next decision better. You'll shape both the product and how we build it at an early stage. You'll work directly with the founder, stay close to customers, and partner with an engineering team that can bring ideas to life quickly. We offer compelling cash compensation and meaningful equity because we're serious about bringing in exceptional people. Location Four days a week in person, with an optional fifth, alongside a small, highly ambitious team. #J-18808-Ljbffr autumn