Category Manager, Japan

🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot!

Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. Whether it's trading cards, fashion, electronics, or live plants, our sellers are building real businesses across hundreds of categories. We're building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West, and there's no playbook to copy. The people here are shaping how an entirely new industry develops.

As a remote co-located team, we're inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia. We move fast, stay close to our users, and focus on the work that drives the most impact.

We're one of the fastest growing marketplaces and were recently named the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our news and engineering blogs and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.

💻 Role

As a Category Manager, you’ll focus on growing the seller communities as we launch into Japan.

• Build our seller community

  • Source and reach out to sellers to convince them to join and grow their business on Whatnot. Leverage social media, outbound channels, and in-person events

  • Partner with top sellers and strategic partners to build big businesses on Whatnot

  • Be the go-to advisor for our sellers, educating and coaching them on ways to grow their businesses on Whatnot. Create the next generation of top sellers in your category

  • Stay close to sellers and buyers in the ecosystem to understand user needs and provide the product team with key user insights and problems to solve.

• Create community-defining moments

  • Spearhead diverse marketing initiatives, such as influencer partnerships, to boost brand awareness and attract more buyers

  • Organize and execute on-app events connected to the most exciting products, moments, and fandoms related to your category

• Use data and strategic thinking to propel your category forward

  • Utilize large sets of data efficiently in order to inform category & country plans, as well as track and report on outcomes

  • Be able to jump in, ramp up quickly, and independently drive strategic projects both in your own category and across partnerships when needed
    

We offer flexibility to work from home or from one of our global office hubs, and we value in-person time for planning, problem-solving, and connection. Team members in this role must live within commuting distance of our Tokyo hub.

👋 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.

As our next Category Manager, you should have:

• 6+ years of mixed 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

• Experience working in a business development or partner-facing role

• You are scrappy and flexible enough to work in an ambiguous environment with limited guidance

• You are a problem solver with strong project management skills and the ability to fully own strategy and execution on both sides of an emerging marketplace

• You have business acumen, are deeply analytical, and comfortable understanding and manipulating data to gain and take action on business insights

• You speak fluent English and native Japanese

🙏 Nice to Have

• Experience at a high-growth startup, marketplace, or creator-focused platform

• An existing network of sellers, creators, and influencers within a Whatnot product category.

• Proficiency in SQL

• Passion for creator communities and/or expertise in existing Whatnot product categories (e.g. vintage clothing, collectibles).

• Experience buying and selling in online marketplaces.

🎁 Benefits

• Generous Holiday and Time off Policy

• Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision

• Work From Home Support

  • Home office setup allowance

  • Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet

• Care benefits

  • Monthly allowance for wellness

  • Annual allowance towards Childcare

  • Lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses

• Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally

• Monthly allowance to dogfood the app

  • All Whatnauts are expected to develop a deep understanding of our product. We're passionate about building the best user experience, and all employees are expected to use Whatnot as both a buyer and a seller as part of their job (our dogfooding budget makes this fun and easy!).

• Parental Leave

  • 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work *company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence.

Please note: Whatnot will only contact you through official @whatnot.com email addresses. If you see an email impersonating a Whatnot recruiter, please disregard and report it as spam.

💛 EOE

Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, parental status, disability status, or any other status protected by local law. We believe that our work is better and our company culture is improved when we encourage, support, and respect the different skills and experiences represented within our workforce.