The company
RareCircles started life as an NFT platform, enabling people to create and launch their own NFT campaigns. At the peak of NFTs, RareCircles was helping launch some fairly large NFT projects (like the Detroit Piston’s own project), and helping these projects manage their communities. When NFTs and crypto started their downturn, it became clear that community was one of the most powerful aspects that been powering NFTs — but what to do with that community after the launch of the project?
Over the next 2 years we set out in search of the ideal community experience, and settled on exclusive memberships as our first full experience.
By 2023 we had built out a cohesive community experience offering exclusive memberships, a members portal, a discussions board, commenting, deliverable benefits and rewards, and a full Shopify integration.
Since late 2023, we’ve been moving deeper into bringing a real, premium experience to retail customers — a very underserved market, which has been overshadowed by massive growth in e-commerce.
The role
I was brought on in 2021 as a contract designer after my friend Pietro (a co-worker from Spotful) reached out with this job opening. A couple months later, there was a full-time opportunity for a product manager position. I applied and was accepted.
Since starting this role, I’ve been very much a junior product manager, due to my lack of experience. I wear many hats in the day-to-day of this startup, often providing customer solutions, and user experience guidance in addition to my core responsibilities surrounding research, planning, and execution of product features.
I’ve help deliver several successful iterations of the RareCircles product, seeing them through from idea to research, to execution. While I can not yet call myself a senior product manager, I have learned a TON since working here in this position, and have grown immensely as a product person.
The tech
Though I don’t dabble in the foundational technology of the product, my days are spent documenting research and planning in Notion, managing tickets in Linear, and huddling or conversing in Slack.