Growth Lead

Stanford GSB Professor on Startups & Investors is the Substack from Ilya Strebulaev, the Stanford Graduate School of Business professor who teaches venture capital and lead the Stanford GSB Venture Capital Initiative. (

Note:

this Substack is not affiliated with or sponsored by Stanford University, and this is not a Stanford position.)

The publication gives readers access to the VC class Ilya teaches at Stanford, plus the Strebulaev-Jackson Venture Rankings (proprietary, data-driven rankings of VC firms and investors that founders, LPs and investors use for fundraising, benchmarking and allocating capital).

This person will turn Ilya’s audience into paying subscribers, expand the overall audience across all platforms, and help us discover what works and what doesn’t.

Every week, the publication ships VC 101 lessons, research and charts, and new editions of the rankings. Your job is to grow the audience for it and convert it to paid: through campaigns, paid acquisition, collaborations with other creators, and constant testing of the offer itself, across our platforms (Substack, Linked In, and X).

This is a hands-on operator role. Ilya is a full-time professor with a large research team. The team also includes a designer and the head of impact with whom you will be working closely. You’ll get direction and access and then be trusted to run with it. We need someone proactive, fluent with AI tools, fast, organized, and not shy about saying when a campaign, price, or offer isn’t working.

You will work with the rest of the team closely.

Full-time and fully remote. We’re open to candidates outside the US. Regular overlap with US Pacific hours for planning calls and launch days is an advantage. No relocation or visa sponsorship. You’ll report directly to Ilya.

• Campaigns & Launches:
• Own the growth campaign calendar: plan every push in advance and tell the team exactly what each one needs
• Run every ranking release as a conversion event: teaser, founding-member early access, public launch, and 2-3 follow-up upgrade emails
• Build news-driven campaigns: when a big round, fund close, or IPO filing breaks, turn it into a subscribe or upgrade push within 24-48 hours
• Plan milestone and moment campaigns (subscriber milestones, events Ilya speaks at, price changes, student/.edu offers)
• Run upgrade, discount, and win-back pushes
• Write the conversion copy: marketing emails, upgrade and landing pages, paywall and subscribe CTAs, welcome and drip sequences
• Social Management:
• Ilya has 140,000 Linked In followers (currently the main top of funnel), also Substack Notes, and X.
• Turn each data release into a week of posts: carousels, charts, takeaway posts, and teasers that keep the full ranking behind the paywall
• Test post formats, hooks, and visuals against each other (we can produce dozens of data posts from a single release - your job is to find the presentation that converts)
• Put the “so what” behind the paywall: share the data, make Ilya’s interpretation the reason to subscribe
• Reintroduce the Substack and its offer on Linked In at least every two weeks
• Build out Substack Notes and X as top of funnel
• Optimize Ilya’s Linked In profile (header, About, Featured) to drive to Substack
• Manage the content calendar across all the channels
• Write in Ilya’s voice: authoritative, data-first, academic credibility without the jargon. You’ll be given the style guide and past posts.
• Product &
  
  Offer:
• Find out what readers pay for and what makes them leave: surveys, subscriber interviews, churn reasons, reply and comment patterns
• Test the offer: pricing, tiers, trials, discounts, what sits behind the paywall
• Bring Ilya clear hypotheses on what to change in the offer,…