Chief Product Officer

**Matter** Chief Product Officer; $160K–$230K + equity; New York City or Miami (Hybrid)

**About Company** Matter is the first platform to pair a digital nutritionist with a physical network of restaurants that cook meals to each user's exact nutritional needs. The Matter app learns each user's goals, preferences and health data (including wearables and biomarkers) and recommends meals down to the gram. The kitchen then prepares them precisely (85g of chicken, not "small or large") for pickup or delivery.

The flagship restaurant opened in NoHo, New York in December 2025 and is already posting best-in-class sales, profitability, and repeat frequency and retention. Before launch, the team spent years building a proprietary point-of-sale and kitchen display system for gram-level customization. Matter is now launching a fully revamped consumer app built to compete head-to-head as a standalone subscription product with MyFitnessPal, MacroFactor, Lose It!, Bevel and Cronometer, while also powering restaurant ordering.

Matter is a sub-15-person team led by co-founders Jon Sherman (restaurant operations, growth, fundraising, marketing) and Kevin (founder and founding engineer of a large blockchain company, currently leading product and engineering). Kevin seed-funded the business, and Matter has since raised from angels at top-tier VC firms and from successful tech and consumer founders, with capital on the balance sheet for growth.

**About the Role** Matter's first Chief Product Officer, owning the app end to end just as it relaunches as both a standalone subscription product and the ordering layer for the restaurants. Today co-founder Kevin is effectively both CPO and CTO; this hire takes over product leadership (a junior PM, a UI/UX designer and an engineering team of three full-time engineers plus a part-time contractor) so Kevin can focus on engineering. On a team this small the CPO acts as a pseudo-CTO: they decide how the product should be built, not just what, and understand the engineers' technical roadblocks in their own language. The app serves two revenue lines, restaurant orders and digital subscriptions, and the CPO decides with data where to invest across them. The long-term vision is for Matter to become the household-name daily nutrition assistant, backed by company-owned, franchise and partner kitchens across major markets.

**Responsibilities** - Own the Matter app roadmap and full product lifecycle (discovery, specs, build, launch, iteration) across the standalone subscription app and restaurant ordering. - Lead the junior PM, UI/UX designer and engineering team day to day; write specs clear enough to ship from and run a fast release cadence. - Own the subscription funnel from onboarding through trial-to-paid conversion and retention; set OKRs on activation, conversion, retention, order frequency and LTV. - Own product analytics and experimentation, pairing behavioral data with weekly user conversations to decide what to build and what not to build. - Own the AI coaching and personalization experience: conversational and photo logging, adaptive plans, wearable and lab integrations. - Be a daily power user of the app and know the nutrition/macro-tracking and restaurant-ordering landscape inside out. - Partner with marketing on launches and lifecycle and with operations so the kitchen can deliver what the app promises; hire and grow the product and design team.

**Required Skills** A. 5–8+ years of product management, including 2+ years leading product at an early-stage startup or a small autonomous team. B. Track record shipping consumer mobile apps that moved retention, engagement or revenue. C. Hands-on with behavioral analytics platforms; strong grasp of consumer subscription conversion and retention metrics. D. Personally lives and breathes nutrition, fitness and health (e.g. active macro tracker, wearables user) and is fluent in the landscape. E. Technical enough to earn engineering's trust: architecture tradeoffs, APIs, mobile release cycles. F. Strong product taste and design instincts. G. Strong technical depth: able to direct how the product is built, not just what, and engage with engineers on technical roadblocks. Hands-on engineering experience (e.g. 2+ years as an engineer before moving into product) is strongly preferred. H. High level of creativity, demonstrated through strong product teardowns and novel product-thinking.

**Bonus Skills** - Has shipped AI/LLM-powered product features; uses AI tools daily for research, specs, prototyping and analysis. - Health data integrations (Apple Health, Oura, Whoop, CGMs) or ML-driven personalization. - Commerce or ordering-flow experience. - Prior startup founder experience.

**Logistical Info** - Location: New York City or Miami, hybrid. Matter wants the CPO in person regularly; exact in-office days are agreed with the candidate. - Compensation: $160K–$230K base + meaningful equity (cash/equity mix is flexible). - **Other:** Medical, dental and vision; 401(k); flexible PTO plus paid company holidays; paid parental leave; free Matter meals.

**Ideal Background** - Personal passion outweighs vertical experience: the founders prefer a product leader from an unrelated consumer app who is a diehard macro tracker or early wearables adopter over someone from a nutrition app who doesn't care about it personally. Both are eligible if the passion is real. - Strong source verticals: crowded, high-stakes consumer apps where every UX decision wins or loses users. Trading, investing and portfolio-management apps (e.g. a product lead from Robinhood) were called out, alongside nutrition/fitness/health apps (MyFitnessPal, MacroFactor, Lose It!, Bevel, Cronometer, Whoop, Oura). - Consumer apps that demand high, continuous user engagement are the strongest fit (e.g., Oura or WHOOP-type health and wellness products) — a much better fit than a "b2b2c" healthcare app. Experience in B2B/SaaS alone has been passed. - Pedigree matters: strong education and early career at brand-name companies known for producing talent, ideally followed by startup experience. The further from that profile, the less excited the founders will be. - Founder background is a plus. - Strongest profiles so far: career engineers who pivoted into product. Engineer-founders are worth submitting even if their titles aren't product. PMs from technical B2B SaaS companies tend to be more technical, which helps if they also bring consumer experience. - Growth/behavioral-analytics PMs without engineering depth are a pass for this hire, however strong. - Hands-on engineering is strongly preferred, not a hard filter: Juan agreed to speak with PMs without a formal engineering background (e.g. an Economics/MBA PM) whose experience showed close, hands-on work with engineering teams. If there's no engineering background, the profile needs clear evidence of shaping how things were built. - Comp note: published range is $160K–$230K; Jon said anything near $250K would have to blow them away. Equity range not shared yet; signal equity only.

**Green Flags** - Diehard macro/nutrition tracker; early adopter of wearables, CGMs or blood-work tools. - Founder mentality: brings their own vision for what the product could become and drives it. - Excited to build process from scratch at a sub-15-person company. - Has led small engineering teams and knows how to get the best out of each engineer. - Long, stable tenures.

**Red Flags** - No genuine personal passion for nutrition, fitness or health. The client asked that no one be submitted without it, regardless of industry experience. - "Technical" only through vibe-coding, or only by handing requirements to engineers through a CTO, with no evidence of shaping how the product was built. - Experience only in B2B/SaaS or "b2b2c" apps, with no consumer-app product experience. - Frequent job hopping / short tenures. - Expects a structured, established environment to plug into. - Base expectations above ~$230K (only for a truly exceptional candidate).

**Interview Process** 1. 1-hour interview with co-founder Jon Sherman and Juan Angel. 2. 1-hour interview with co-founder Kevin. 3. Case-by-case: 1-hour technical screen with one or more engineers. Not a technical interview; it confirms the candidate can effectively manage and work with the technical team.