Founding Product Manager (co-founder, equity) Barcelona Onsite/Spanish required
Summary
Co-founder Product Manager at an early-stage Barcelona startup building a tool that automates CAE compliance-document uploads for Spanish subcontractors. Equity-only until MRR passes €10k; you'd run customer discovery, sales, and product spec — cold-calling and visiting subcontractors in Spanish, onsite in Barcelona.
Compensation: $0k – $1k • 10.0% – 25.0%
Location:** Barcelona, in person.** Not remote. Compensation: equity only until first revenue. Range and vesting below. Start: October 2026.** Languages: Spanish and English fluent, Catalan a plus.**
Folks from outside Spain and do not speak Spanish - Please do not apply, you are wasting your and my time and electricity.
What we are building
Every Spanish subcontractor that sends workers onto a client's site (installers, maintenance firms, cleaning, industrial services) has to prove, worker by worker, that the paperwork is in order: social security, training, medical fitness, insurance. The client demands it through a CAE platform it chose. A subcontractor with five clients faces five platforms, five formats, five sets of expiry rules. Someone in the office spends 8 to 12 hours a week re uploading the same files, or the company pays €200 to €600 a month for a person to do it. When a document expires unnoticed, a worker is turned away at the gate.
Where we are: research done (market, competitors, platforms, legal, unit economics), product spec written, UI mocked up. Zero customers, zero code in production. The next 90 days are about talking to 30 subcontractors, signing 10 alpha customers, and building the smallest thing they will pay for.
The founder is a repeat B2B software founder (one of his previous companies became a unicorn after he left), CPTO by trade, based in Barcelona. He builds fast. He does not yet speak Spanish well enough to sell. That is the gap you fill.
What you will do
In the first 90 days:
Call and visit subcontractors in Barcelona and Tarragona. Find the office manager who does the uploads and the owner who pays. Ask when a worker last got stopped at a gate, what they pay today, how many platforms they face. Log every conversation. Sign 10 alpha customers who let us run their CAE uploads by hand while we build. You will be in their office with a laptop doing the first upload live. Turn what you hear into the product. Decide what goes in the first version and what waits. Write the WhatsApp messages, the onboarding checklist, the one page presupuesto, in Spanish that an installer's admin actually uses. Open doors with the gremios (GREMIMET, Gremi de Tarragona), a few gestorías and one prevention service. The plan depends on one of them endorsing us before we have ten customers. Own the product spec and the roadmap after that. The founder builds what you and the customers decide.
After 90 days: you run product and customer discovery, the founder runs engineering, and we hire a salesperson under you when the pitch is repeatable.
Who this is for
You have sold, supported or built something for Spanish SMEs, ideally in construction, installation, facility services, PRL, or a gestoría. You have used a CAE platform (Nalanda, Obralia, CTAIMA, Twind, Dokify, e-coordina) or you have watched someone suffer through one. You are comfortable calling a stranger who owns a 20 person installer firm, and comfortable sitting in his office at 8 in the morning. You write clear Spanish and speak it like the customer does. You can work with an English speaking founder all day. You have shipped a product or run a customer facing process end to end. Title does not matter. Having been an office manager at a subcontractor counts as much as having been a PM at a startup. You want a co founder seat, not a job. You are fine with no salary for the first months and you can say so plainly.
Not for you if: you need a salary from month one, you want to manage a team before there is one, you would rather write strategy documents than make 30 calls a week, or you have never closed anything.
Equity and terms
Founding PM, second founder. Equity range 10% - 35%, four year vesting, one year cliff, standard for a founding hire in Spain. Salary starts when monthly recurring revenue passes €10,000, target within 6 to 9 months. Contract as autónomo or via a founders' agreement, your choice, drafted by a Spanish lawyer. The founder keeps control and is the CEO.
You will see the full business plan, the numbers, the risks (including the two that could kill it: platform terms of use, and whether in house firms will pay €149) before you decide. We would rather you say no with full information than yes with half.
