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Hi! I’m John, a product manager based in the NYC/NJ area. I'm obsessed with creating customer-centric, intuitive and data influenced products/features.
Faster, better products that end users love. I excel at providing high-quality skills that are demanded of highly skilled PMs. #SwissArmyKnife
Every product manager needs the right tools to do the perfect job. Thankfully, I'm multilingual. If you don't see a tool on this list...don't worry, I'm a quick study!
I build and launch products that are best-in-class. I leverage the business OKRs/KPIs to make them shippable and easily trackable to quantify success.
Over the past 12 years, I've worked with a diverse range of companies, from hyper-growth startups to well established companies, focused on B2C, B2B, SaaS, hardware, etc. Ive had the ability to work on web-apps, mobile apps (iOS & Android)and hardware-software integrations. I truly have a deep passion for building impactful solutions to profound problems while still remaining intuitive, delight end users and help businesses grow.
Most recently, over the past 4 years I have led end-to-end development of B2B / B2C / B2B2C mobile and web apps (plus point-of-sale hardware integration). I have worked on most core features ranging from calendar, scheduling, payments processing, dashboards & data management, e-commerce, team management, messaging, and much more. In the past, I have spent time building large-scale hardware <> software integrations for the BAS industry as well as developing event experiences, hardware and mobile app for Tough Mudder. Generally speaking, I have split my time between startups and larger organizations, granting me the ability to thrive in any environment.
Backstory: I recently joined a new team where we were launching a new version of our product, directed at partnerships with associations. There was a lot of hype and potential around this release due to the sheer quantity of prospective users that would be funneled to our website and app.
The Failure: While we gained access to nearly 1M new potential customers, who were well supported by our features, it was a true flow. We ended up only converting 0.4% of those users to the platform.
Not ALL Bad: This low % in reality was low...however, this led to a 2x in our total customers. Still not ideal for a startup thats trying to scale the business to 10x.
Bright light: After coming to terms with our defeat, this drove the question of "why" did we miss the mark. In doing so, I dove deeper into the data and uncovered that nearly 90% of our revenue was coming from 10% of our paying users! These were not the users that were being targeted with the Association edition, but Franchises and multi-location businesses in a few select verticals. We immediately pivoted to supporting these industries and ideal customer profiles, leading to key insights and new partnerships...most importantly, the 10x potential we were looking for as a scaling company.
At a high level, it is a combination of wholistic customer feedback, data analytics, internal stakeholder input to crate an well rounded view of the pain points and understand the Effort vs Value from a prioritization perspective.
Then I meet with the engineering manager/lead/team member slated for x-feature and get a better understanding of who’s best suited to work on the project and the rough duration that it might have.
The combo of what the current effort outlook + priories + business objectives helps finalize the roadmap itself.
Im stoked about the potential of finding a company where I am excited about the mission, goals and problem(s) that I would be helping solve.
Im obsessed with building amazing solutions that have a profound impact for the end user and the world around me.
Im excited about being part of a product team and leveling up my skills; having always been a lead PM, this is something that Ive been looking for specifically to help me grow professionally.
Lastly, I want to be surrounded by a team of people who are equally as passionate about solving the same problem.
Generally speaking, it depends on where the product is in its lifecycle and what is the best way to build impactful solutions for the end user (enterprise, consumer, SMB, etc).
With that said, I have found a passion for working on mobile applications as it has a wider impact and is typically directed at the B2C space which is where I thrive. Building mobile solutions for customer pain points has such a wide range ability to provide invaluable solutions for users and allows to solve them in intuitive ways. Mobile customers are also very passionate and evangelical so this creates both an amazing feedback loop for innovation and allows you/the team to know when/where you're hitting the mark and when you're not.
I take a problem-forward approach. Whether we're iterating on an existing product or building a new one from scratch, how to solve the user's problem in the most intuitive way possible, while keeping engineering efforts in mind is my first concern.
Generally speaking, I can break down my end-to-end development process into the following steps:
1. Exploration (Customer & Competitive)
2. Ideation (Brainstorming and Prioritization)
3. Design (Ideation, Wireframing, Prototyping)
4. Dev (Document, Handoff, Unblock)
5. Test (QA testing, Bugs, retesting)
6. Launch (CS, Marketing, Documentation)
7. Retrospective (Good/Bad, Improvements)
8. Repeat (Iterate, Improvements, New, Fix)
"As a PM, I am the product teams (dev & design) first line of defense from other team stakeholders...I keep them unblocked first and foremost."
Pre-Development:
Include them in the design ideation process if interested so they get a better understanding of direction. They are some of the best problem solvers and can help the team head in the correct direction early vs wasting time on a hard to dev design update or feature idea. Build out a detailed PRD and all-in-one handoff guide (links to PRD, design files, cross-team insights, research data, testing plans, etc) to help communicate what the scope of work is for this initiative. Build-in as much detail into design file as possible to make it easier for engineersLead condensed team handoff meeting to get dev fully up-to-speed and work out any final kinks or questions during their allocated time.
During Development:
Schedule consistent, but not inefficient meetings to check-in on progress and answer questions. Work with dev team to get a build on staging asap to QA as early as possible, in order to work out any potential bugs and identify a launch gameplan.
Post Development:
Provide dev with insights on how the release went and if there are any follow-on bugs that need to be remedied. Check-in on how they are doing, what we did great and what we can do better next time.
I have been told that my top superpower is being a great Team Builder. I would argue that I have an obsession with the end user, true dedication to supporting my team and being a culture leader. By utilizing customer empathy, cross-functional collaboration, and fostering a culture of creativity and innovation, I have found that a company can develop products and strategies that resonate with customers. I strive to do this by enhancing the overall user experience, leverage cross-functional efficiencies and ideation, ultimately driving positive outcomes across a range of company goals.
