Growth Hacker – Founder in Training | Playbook Sports | Handshake

Playbook Sports; Hoboken (NJ); On-site; USD 40,000 - 60,000; Part time

Job summary

Playbook, the all-in-one operating system for youth sports, seeks a Founder-in-Training style growth intern in Hoboken. You’ll develop content, run paid campaigns, and help scale outreach to camps, clubs, leagues and facilities.

You’ll work closely with the founders and have a path to a full‑time growth role with real responsibility and a meaningful budget. You are scrappy, data‑minded, and an excellent writer who enjoys variety—content, ads, events, and product experiments.

Qualifications

• Must be scrappy and own tasks from start to finish.
• Strong numerical sense and ability to read dashboards.
• Excellent writing to communicate with youth-sports directors and admins.
• AI-native mindset and ability to apply AI tools for research and content.
• Currently a student, recent grad or early-career builder available through May.

Responsibilities

• Content strategy: build and run a cross-platform engine for engagement.
• Paid ads: launch and optimize campaigns on Meta, Google, and LinkedIn.
• Conferences and events: plan presence and VIP outreach at events.
• Website optimization: run A/B tests and create segmented landing pages.
• Outbound offers: design compelling offers and test outbound sequences.
• Product-led growth: ship growth experiments and measure activation.
• What success looks like: demostrate weekly progress and build a repeatable playbook.

Skills

Hustle

Ownership

Numerical comfort

Strong writing

AI mindset

Education

Student or recent grad or early-career builder available through May

Tools

Meta Ads

Google Ads

LinkedIn Ads

Webflow

Unbounce

CapCut

Canva

Figma

Job description

About Playbook

Playbook is the all-in-one, AI-powered operating system for sports and recreation. Camps, clubs, leagues, schools and facilities run their entire business on us: registration, scheduling, payments, marketing, memberships, fundraising and the website that ties it all together.

Youth and amateur sports is a massive, passionate market still running on spreadsheets, paper waivers and five disconnected tools. We replace that patchwork with one platform built for how sports orgs actually work, then layer AI on top so a two-person front office can operate like a team of twenty.

What makes Playbook different:

• AI built in, not bolted on. PlayBot, our in-product AI assistant, answers questions and gets admins to the right workflow fast. Our AI-powered email marketing lets orgs send up to 10,000 emails a month free with personalized, automated campaigns.
• Ready for the agent era. Playbook runs a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server alongside our open REST API, so an org's data is available to AI agents. Very few sports platforms offer this.
• Grow, not just manage. Smart registration, SEO tools, website builder, marketing automation and Playbook Raise for fundraising help orgs fill programs and grow revenue, not just track it.
• Run the whole facility. Drag-and-drop bookable calendar, bulk session creation, layered locations, rentals, memberships, passes, payment plans and low-cost ACH.
• Mobile-first community. The Playbook Connect app keeps parents, players, coaches and staff in sync on iOS and Android.
• Proof it works. A 15-year NBA veteran used Playbook to grow a single basketball court into a thriving five-court complex, all on one platform. We're rated 4.6/5 on G2.
• Big-league energy. We host VIP suite events at pro venues for the sports leaders in our markets. Growth here means you'll help pack those suites.

Sources: callplaybook.com, Playbook partner profile, AI tools page, G2

Why "Founder in Training"

This is not a coffee-run internship. You'll sit next to the founders, see the real numbers, and own experiments end to end: idea, build, launch, measure, kill or scale.

We call it Founder in Training because the job is to think like an owner. You'll learn how a fast-growing SaaS company finds, wins and keeps customers, and you'll ship things that move the pipeline every single week. If you've ever wanted to start something, this is the closest thing to doing it with a safety net, a playbook (literally) and a team cheering you on.

Perform through May and you step into a full-time growth role with a bigger scope, a bigger budget and a seat at the table.

What You'll Do

Everything you touch ladders up to one goal: more qualified demos and more momentum in our target segments (camps, clubs, leagues, schools and facilities).

Content strategy

• Build and run a content engine across LinkedIn, short-form video, email and blog that makes sports operators stop scrolling.
• Turn customer wins, product launches and AI features into stories, case studies and SEO pages that rank and convert.
• Use AI tools to produce faster and test more angles than a traditional team ever could.

Paid ads

• Launch, manage and optimize campaigns on Meta, Google and LinkedIn aimed at specific segments and markets.
• Own the testing loop: creative, audiences, offers, landing pages. Track cost per demo, not just clicks.
• Build retargeting that brings warm prospects back to book.

Conferences and events

• Help plan and promote our presence at industry conferences, trade shows and our VIP suite events at pro venues.
• Build pre-event outreach, booth offers and post-event follow-up sequences that turn handshakes into demos.

Website and landing page optimization

• Run A/B tests on headlines, offers, forms and CTAs to lift conversion on callplaybook.com and campaign pages.
• Spin up fast, segment‑specific landing pages for each campaign, market and vertical.
• Dig into analytics and session data to find where visitors drop and fix it.

Outbound offers

• Design irresistible offers (free tools, audits, ROI breakdowns, event invites) that give our sales team a reason to reach out.
• Build and test outbound sequences with the AE team, and track reply and booking rates by segment.

Product-led growth

• Find ways for the product to sell itself: free tools, freemium hooks, in‑app referral loops and self‑serve trials.
• Partner with product and engineering to ship growth experiments, then measure activation and conversion.
• Leverage tools like our free scheduler and AI email marketing as top‑of‑funnel magnets.

What Success Looks Like

1. First 30 days: You know our segments, product and buyer cold. You've audited our funnel, set up demo tracking by channel, and shipped your first landing page test and content series.
2. By 60 days: You're running paid campaigns with clear cost‑per-demo numbers, an outbound offer in market with the AE team, and a weekly growth report the founders actually look forward to.
3. By 90 days: At least one channel or experiment is measurably adding demos every week, and you own a repeatable playbook for it.
4. By May: You've built a growth engine with your fingerprints all over it, shipped a product-led growth initiative, and earned the full‑time role.

Who You Are

You're scrappy, curious and allergic to "that's how we've always done it." You'd rather run ten small experiments than write one long plan.

Must-haves

• Hustle and ownership. You finish what you start and don't wait to be told.
• Comfort with numbers. You can build a simple funnel, read a dashboard and say what's working.
• Strong writing. You can make a youth sports director and a facility owner both feel understood.
• An AI-native mindset. You already use AI tools to research, write, design and build faster.
• Currently a student, recent grad or early-career builder available through May.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with Meta, Google or LinkedIn Ads, HubSpot, or landing page tools like Webflow or Unbounce.
• Video editing or design skills (Canva, CapCut, Figma).
• A sports background: former athlete, coach, ref, league volunteer or rec‑league legend.
• Something you've started: a side hustle, a club, a newsletter, an online store, anything.

What You Get

• A real path to full time. Crush it through May and the full‑time growth role is yours.
• Founder-level access. Direct mentorship from the people building the company, plus a front-row seat to strategy, sales and product.
• Real budget, real stakes. You'll spend real ad dollars and own real numbers, not hypothetical ones.
• Big-league experiences. Help run and attend our VIP suite events at pro sports venues.
• A portfolio that stands out. Every campaign, page and experiment you ship is yours to show.
• Impact you can feel. The orgs we serve put kids on fields, courts and ice every day. Helping them grow matters.

Compensation, location and hours

Compensation, location and hours: [to be added].