Remote | Europe preferred | 30-day paid PMF sprint → potential founding-team role + equity

SplitStay is looking for an exceptional operator to help answer one question that could define the future of the company:

Will travelers attending the same event actually share accommodation with a compatible stranger if SplitStay makes the match and the savings are meaningful?

We do not need another person to discuss how we might test this.

We need someone who wants to own the test and make it happen.

Your first mission is simple:

1 event.

1 concentrated community.

30 days.

Minimal product.

Real transactions.

The leading event we are considering for the first experiment is HYROX Barcelona (https://hyrox.com/event/hyrox-barcelona-2/), because it combines concentrated travel demand, relatively fixed dates, expensive accommodation and a strong community.

But HYROX Barcelona is the recommended starting point, not a constraint .

If you have unusually strong access to another event, sport, conference, festival, gaming community or other concentrated travel cohort and can make a compelling case that it offers a better test environment, we want to hear it.

The goal is not to prove that HYROX works.

The goal is to prove or disprove the underlying SplitStay behavior as quickly and rigorously as possible.

The experiment

Our PMF recommendation is deliberately low-tech:

Do not build the marketplace first.

Find people traveling to the same event, identify those traveling alone, understand their dates, budget and accommodation preferences, manually create compatible matches and see whether strangers actually accept the match and complete a shared accommodation booking.

The indicative funnel is

1,000 relevant attendees reached

→ 100+ sign-ups

→ 60+ willing to share

→ 40+ successfully matched

→ 30+ matches accepted

→ target 25 real shared accommodation bookings

These are experiment targets, not industry benchmarks.

What matters is not registrations, clicks or people saying they like the idea.

What matters is behavior.

Do compatible strangers actually say yes?

Do they actually book?

And will they pay SplitStay for creating that value?

You can read the full PMF experiment recommendation that inspired this role here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cbL6dDKBV1dRSuS0jGlhooJZdUERxjS_/view?usp=sharing The core recommendation is explicitly to choose one concentrated event cohort, build almost nothing, manually match participants and measure real shared bookings rather than stated interest.

Your mission

You will own the commercial and operational side of the experiment from beginning to end.

That means figuring out how to:

- reach the right event attendees;
- unlock communities, gyms, clubs, ambassadors and distribution partners;
- get qualified travelers into the funnel;
- speak directly with users every day;
- improve the proposition based on what you learn;
- verify event attendance where appropriate;
- collect dates, budgets and accommodation preferences;




- manually identify compatible travelers;
- propose matches and get both people to actively accept;
- follow up relentlessly when somebody disappears;
- help accepted matches move toward a real accommodation booking;
- understand exactly why people refuse, hesitate or drop out;
- test willingness to pay;
- keep clean funnel data;
- document the playbook so Event #2 can be executed faster than Event #1.

You will have support from SplitStay's product and engineering team. But you own the outcome .

This is not a traditional marketing role

We are not primarily looking for someone to:

- manage a content calendar;
- optimize SEO;
- run generic paid campaigns;
- prepare strategy presentations;
- coordinate agencies;
- wait for engineering to build more features.

We are looking for someone who sees: “We need 100 qualified travelers in this funnel.”

…and immediately starts figuring out where those people are and how to reach them.

You should be comfortable doing things that do not scale yet.

Direct messages. WhatsApp. Community outreach. Calls. Gym partnerships. Manual matching. User interviews. Following up five times when necessary.

The purpose of the first 30 days is learning, not automation.

The PMF recommendation specifically calls for a landing page, simple intake and manual communication rather than significant product development.

Who we are looking for

There is no perfect CV for this role.

You might be

- an aspiring or former founder;
- an early-stage startup operator;
- a marketplace operator;
- a community builder;
- an events operator;
- an entrepreneurial salesperson;
- a growth operator who actually enjoys talking to users;
- someone from travel or endurance sports;
- someone who has repeatedly figured things out without being given a playbook.

What matters much more is how you operate. You are likely a strong fit if you:
- naturally take ownership;
- move quickly with incomplete information;
- are highly resourceful;
- are comfortable with rejection;
- enjoy speaking directly with users;
- understand funnels and conversion;
- care about transactions more than vanity metrics;
- can open doors without waiting for introductions;
- are commercially sharp;
- are comfortable doing manual work before automating it;
- know how to distinguish a failed hypothesis from poor execution;
- can turn what you learn into a repeatable playbook.

Experience with marketplaces, travel, events, HYROX/endurance sports, community-led growth or early-stage startups is especially relevant.

Location

This is a remote role .

You do not need to live in Barcelona.

Access to the right communities,



execution ability and ownership matter much more than where you are based.

For the HYROX Barcelona experiment, being willing to travel to Barcelona for key moments could be useful, but the majority of the experiment can be executed remotely.

We are particularly interested in candidates based in Europe or able to work effectively with European event communities.

Why SplitStay

SplitStay started from a simple observation:

People going to the same place often book accommodation independently even when sharing could save them hundreds of euros.

Our hypothesis is that SplitStay can organize that fragmented demand.

Initially, that could mean matching two compatible travelers into one twin room.

Over time, it could also mean assembling compatible groups into apartments, villas and other larger accommodation units, helping travelers save while making accommodation capacity more efficiently usable.

And accommodation sharing may only be the wedge.

Once SplitStay understands who is traveling where, when, with what budget and what they are willing to share , the opportunity can extend into broader travel coordination.

The PMF recommendation describes exactly this progression: prove the accommodation-sharing behavior first, repeat it across events, and only then earn the right to build the larger marketplace.

SplitStay is currently part of Alta Lab and has previously participated in Start it @KBC and ESADE eWorks Barcelona .

You will work directly with the founder and a distributed team across product, engineering and strategy.

The opportunity

If you execute exceptionally well and we discover strong mutual fit, this can grow into a co-founder role.

For the right person, that could include:

→ ownership of GTM and marketplace growth

→ responsibility for repeating the model across events and communities

→ a founding-team role

→ meaningful equity in SplitStay

Whether the underlying hypothesis succeeds is not the only measure of your performance .

If you execute a rigorous experiment and prove that travelers will not behave this way, that is valuable too.

What matters is whether you can get SplitStay to a reliable answer quickly.

We are looking for someone who sees an ambiguous challenge and thinks:

“Give me the outcome. I'll figure out how to get there.”

How to apply

Please do not send a generic cover letter.

Send a connection request directly to SplitStay founder Ruben Vanhees :

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenvanhees/

Mention “Founding GTM & Marketplace Operator” in your connection request.

Once connected, send a short message covering:

1. How you would approach getting the first 100 qualified travelers into the experiment.

2. One example of something you personally took from zero to a measurable result without being given a playbook.

3. Whether you would run the first experiment around HYROX Barcelona or another event/community, and why.

We will prioritize evidence of execution over polished applications.

📌 Founding GTM & Marketplace Operator | SplitStay (Barcelona)
🏢 SplitStay
📍 Barcelona