Product Manager, Lab

FundraiseUp Inc.

Job Overview

Location

Portugal - Remote

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Are you a visionary Product Manager with a passion for exploring the bleeding edge of technology and a knack for identifying high-risk, high-reward opportunities? Fundraise Up is seeking a pioneering Product Manager to lead our innovative 'Lab' initiative, a dedicated unit focused on discovering and validating the future of digital fundraising.
• At Fundraise Up, we are not content with merely scaling our existing, highly successful platform. We are committed to a strategic investment in bold, disruptive product ideas that have the potential to redefine the fundraising landscape. The Lab is the engine for this exploration, designed to uncover new capabilities, enter new categories, and pioneer novel applications of technology within the nonprofit sector.
• As the Product Manager for the Lab, your primary mission is to systematically reduce uncertainty around groundbreaking product concepts. This role is fundamentally about learning and making decisive, evidence-based investment choices, rather than simply shipping features. You will be empowered to own ideas from their nascent stages through rigorous validation and ultimately, to make the critical 'scale, pivot, or kill' decisions. The expectation is that most ideas will be discontinued early, but a select few, backed by strong validation, will graduate to our New Markets or Core product teams.
• Your success will be measured by the speed of your learning and the quality of your decision-making, not by the volume of output or immediate adoption metrics. This is a role for a strategic thinker who thrives in ambiguity and is driven by intellectual curiosity and a desire to shape the future.
• You will be instrumental in identifying emerging opportunities driven by new technologies, advancements in Artificial Intelligence, evolving data capabilities, and shifts in platform infrastructure. Your ability to translate nascent signals and theoretical technical possibilities into clear, testable product hypotheses will be crucial.
• A key aspect of this role involves exploring ideas even before a clear buyer, established market category, or definitive demand signal exists. You will maintain a dynamic exploration backlog, meticulously documenting risks, underlying assumptions, and specific learning objectives for each initiative.
• You will be responsible for designing experiments that rigorously test the riskiest assumptions at the core of each hypothesis. Before any development begins, you will define explicit 'kill criteria' – the specific conditions under which an idea will be abandoned. You will possess the agility to select the most appropriate fidelity for experimentation, ranging from low-fidelity prototypes and technical spikes to 'Wizard of Oz' tests and live pilots.
• The guiding principle for your work will be to 'build just enough to learn – never more.' This means executing scrappy prototypes, Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), and pilots with minimal scope, prioritizing rapid iteration and learning over premature optimization.
• You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including Engineering, Design, Data, and Go-to-Market (GTM) stakeholders, throughout the experimentation process, ensuring alignment and leveraging diverse expertise.
• A critical part of your role will be synthesizing experimental results into clear, opinionated recommendations: Scale, Iterate, or Kill. You will communicate your findings effectively, articulating precisely what was tested, the key learnings derived, and any remaining unknowns.
• You must be adept at avoiding 'zombie initiatives' – ensuring that every experiment culminates in a definitive decision. This includes the courage to advocate for killing your own ideas when the evidence suggests they are not viable.
• When an opportunity demonstrates strong potential, you will prepare it for a seamless handoff to other teams. This involves providing validated value and problem hypotheses, comprehensive evidence from experiments or pilots, clearly defined risks, assumptions, and success metrics, and a proposed ownership and scaling model. It is imperative to transfer ownership fully, as the Lab's mandate is exploration, not the management of scaled products.
• Operating with transparency is paramount. You will maintain a visible Lab portfolio, showcasing ongoing explorations, their rationale, and current signals. You will publish decision memos and learning summaries, and openly share learnings from failed experiments when they offer clear insights.
• You will leverage modern AI tools to accelerate research, synthesis, prototyping, and experimentation. This includes exploring AI-enabled product ideas with a realistic understanding of their associated costs, latency, data requirements, and accuracy limitations. Your role will involve distinguishing genuine technological capability shifts from mere hype and helping the organization understand when AI truly accelerates learning.
• You will be empowered to launch high-risk, high-signal initiatives, selectively pursuing bold ideas even when short-term adoption is uncertain. These launches will be treated as genuine product bets, designed to test future categories, shape market perception, and signal technical leadership. You will be explicit about the intent behind each launch: whether it's for learning, creating optionality, or external signaling.
• This role is akin to a Senior or Principal Individual Contributor Product Manager, demanding strong independent judgment and minimal reliance on process scaffolding. You will have the autonomy to drive innovation and explore uncharted territory within the digital fundraising space.

🎯 Requirements

• 5+ years in product management roles with demonstrable experience in 0→1 product development or exploratory ownership.
• Proven track record of personally owning multiple high-risk product bets with explicit go/kill decision-making processes.
• Experience where rapid learning speed was prioritized over product polish and immediate feature delivery.
• Comfort operating with significant downside risk, including time investment, opportunity cost, and potential impact on credibility.
• Strong hands-on experience utilizing AI and modern tooling (e.g., LLMs, APIs) for product exploration, prototyping, and experimentation, with a realistic understanding of AI's capabilities and limitations (data, cost, latency, accuracy).

🏖️ Benefits

• Stock options providing equity participation in Fundraise Up's growth.
• Private medical insurance for the employee and their family.
• Generous paid time off: 22 vacation days and up to 14 public holidays per year.
• 5 company-paid sick leave days.
• Opportunities for professional development, including English learning courses and relevant professional education.
• Wellness benefits such as gym or swimming pool access.
• Home Office Setup Assistance to create a comfortable and productive remote workspace.
• Co-working space access.
• Remote working flexibility within Portugal.
• Monthly allowance of €50 to cover internet and mobile phone expenses.

Skills & Technologies

Product Management

Remote

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FundraiseUp Inc.

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About FundraiseUp Inc.

FundraiseUp provides a SaaS donation platform for nonprofits, charities, and NGOs. Its technology uses AI and behavioral data to personalize giving experiences, increase donor conversion, and reduce abandonment. Features include one-click payments, recurring giving, multilingual donation forms, and analytics dashboards. The platform integrates with CRMs like Salesforce and Blackbaud, supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, ACH, and credit cards, and offers A/B testing and fraud protection. It serves organizations worldwide, helping them raise funds online without dedicated technical staff.

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