Part Time Chief of Staff / Exec Admin

The Job in Brief

Three companies, a wide variety of projects, and one very unique position. Rand Fishkin, Cofounder/CEO of Snackbar Studio, SparkToro, and Alertmouse has found himself overwhelmed with obligations and suffering from a debilitating case of RSI (a condition that makes it difficult to use a keyboard or mouse without pain). He needs someone who can handle diverse assignments in the fields of product design, digital marketing, content editing, stats analysis, project management, and more. This role is highly flexible: work where, how, and when you want; ~25 hours/week on average.

Project Examples

During a given week, you might be asked to:

• Research traditional Italian recipes that match the complex game design constraints we’ll need for the cooking portion of The Snackbar at The End of the World. It may sound simple, but the game design requirements are complex, and this demands researching in Italian (using translation is fine) – English-language websites don’t correctly publish the original/traditional recipes.
• Build a product feedback survey and email the beta testers using Alertmouse to get their thoughts on updates to the tool
• Brainstorm and iterate on the LLM prompts the SparkToro team is integrating into its new “Take Action” section of the app
• Edit, polish, label/describe, and publish videos from Rand’s interviews and video content on YouTube, Threads, LinkedIn, and Bluesky
• Polish up voice transcripts Rand’s made for an upcoming book to make them editor-ready
• Help read and edit the game dialogue for Snackbar’s characters
• Screenshot sections of the SparkToro or Alertmouse product and paste them into Google Slides so Rand/Amanda can easily leave feedback on copy, UI, UX, or functionality
• Assist with trip planning and research for the Snackbar team (finding hotel and flight options, key restaurants, historical sites, etc.)
• Write job descriptions for roles that the companies may be hiring for, and filter the initial applications to help prioritize the best candidates
• Reply to support emails for SparkToro and Alertmouse, potentially using those products’ admin tools (or looping in the right team members) to help solve customer problems

You don’t need to already know how to do all of these! Rand expects that he’ll be helping out with voice/video/in-person assistance. But, because his hands are in a state of significant pain/disuse, he needs someone who’s willing to take on both menial/busywork types of tasks and more technical/complex projects (with help and guidance).

Requirements

Please don’t apply for the role unless you meet all of the following:

1. Exceptionally strong writing and editing skills, especially on email. Rand tries to write with a dose of humor and a lot of empathy; you should too. All three companies use email heavily for intra-team work, and to communicate with customers, partners, and fans. You’re welcome to use AI to help you write/brainstorm/plan/research, but not for anything that will be published or sent to another person via email.
2. Social media content creation and distribution experience–especially on platforms like LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, YouTube, and Reddit. You don’t need to actively use all of these, but should be familiar with them.
3. Familiarity with Powerpoint/Google Slides and Excel/Google Sheets – you should be able to build a competent, clear presentation in the former and brand-color-formatted, easily-readable graphs (like this) in the latter.
4. Live in the Greater Seattle area, be comfortable with primarily remote/work-from-home, and able to occasionally commute (~1X every 2 weeks) to a coffee shop near Greenlake for collaborative projects (all of the companies are remote, so we don’t have any formal offices)
5. Comfortable learning and using SaaS marketing tools like SparkToro, Alertmouse, Wistia, Profitwell, Google Analytics, Balsamiq, and others
6. Have excellent professional discretion and be comfortable handling confidential materials and sensitive tasks. This position will give you access to a lot of product information that hasn’t been released yet, a good deal of confidential emails and communications, potentially finance-related tasks, and generally require you to be a discrete, considerate human who won’t use any of it for nefarious purposes.  

Additional Nice-to-Haves

These aren’t required, but if you’ve got these skills, it’ll be a leg up on the learning process:

• Previous experience working for a startup, accelerator program, incubator, or similar
• Previous product design experience (for software and/or video games)
• Previous digital marketing experience (content, email, social, video), especially for B2B software
• Knowledge of statistics, and ability to audit data from surveys, clickstream panels, and other stats sources and effectively format it visually for public consumption
• Visual branding, layout, and UI/UX skills
• Exec Admin/Personal Assistant experience handling sensitive personal data, credit cards, trip planning, expensing of receipts, bank transactions, etc.
• Recruiting/hiring experience, in particular posting job ads and reviewing/filtering the often large numbers of applicants that apply

Compensation and Structure

This is a contract, 20-30 hours/week position in Seattle with a monthly rate of $4,500-$6,500/month depending on experience, benefits needs (e.g. we can work out a healthcare plan via Remote.com or similar), and time commitment. If your availability is closer to 20 hours/week, we can make it work, and if you’re looking for more hours/comp, we’ll have enough projects to fill that time, too.

A Bit About the Companies

SparkToro, a B2B SaaS company in the audience research space is where Rand spends ~70% of his professional time. Along with co-workers Amanda Natividad and Casey Henry, SparkToro serves ~1,500 paying subscribers and 100K+ free users. We’ve got a unique funding model and a Chill Work approach that favors better results > hustle-for-the-sake-of-hustle culture.

Snackbar Studio is an indie game maker working on its first title: The Snackbar at the End of the World. Similar to SparkToro, it’s funded using a unique model, and focused on making a great game within the boundaries of European working hours. The cofounders - Nicolas, Miriam, Francesco, Rand, and Geraldine - along with a growing team of artists, engineers, and QAs anticipate an Early Access release on Steam in the first half of 2027. 

Alertmouse is a still-in-private-beta startup made by Adam Doppelt, Nathan Kriege, and Rand. Our mission is to make an affordable, better version of Google Alerts. We’re launching Fall 2025, and hoping to help many PRs, marketers, creators, founders, authors, and more track where they’re talked about on the Internet.
 

How to Apply:

Please send an email to [email protected] that includes:

• Your resume as an attachment or link
• URL of your LinkedIn profile (and any other social profiles you think might be relevant)
• Details on how you match the requirements and nice-to-haves for the job

I’ll do my best to get back to you, but due to my RSI pain, responses may be clipped. Apologies in advance.
 

Can’t you just “Hire an AI” to Do This?

Nope. 😅

Is it OK to use AI in this role?

Sure, so long as nothing you write/create with it goes out publicly (no AI images in blog posts, AI writing in emails, or AI content in presentations or the book).