Product leadership that earns its keep

The useful question is where the business is losing money or customers, and what would change if we addressed it. These are examples of finding that problem, taking ownership, and following the work through to a result.

Where that judgment paid dividends

Presage Technologies: product work built around customer outcomes

At Presage Technologies, I work on product: customer discovery, shaping product direction, and working with engineering to turn customer needs into a product people can use and trust.

For Brown University’s researchers, that meant making remote studies easier to run and removing barriers to participation. Researchers struggled with study setup. Some participants were uncomfortable seeing themselves on camera; others faced barriers when using assistive technology.

I worked directly with Brown’s researchers and led the changes through delivery. Researchers gained clearer study setup and questionnaire progress. Participants could hide their own video while scans continued, and screen-reader and keyboard users could take part more easily. The work addressed Brown’s inclusion needs and strengthened the research partnership.

Owner.com: revenue lost before the customer ever saw the offer

$25M in additional revenue.

Owner.com’s restaurant customers depended on marketing emails to bring diners back. But the system sent messages one at a time and stopped before it finished. Coupons never reached people who might have used them. Revenue was being lost inside a product customers were already paying for.

I found the bottleneck and changed the system to send emails in parallel. The fix fit into an afternoon. Campaigns could reach their full audiences, putting coupons in front of diners who previously never received them.

Sendoso: keep customers and win enterprise revenue

Fewer customers leaving, fewer calls to support

A customer could try to send a gift, have it fail because their account was a few dollars short, and never know the gift hadn’t gone out. They couldn’t see what had happened or fix it themselves. Sendoso was losing customers over a failure to deliver the basic thing they’d paid for.

I identified that gap and owned the send dashboard from the product idea through delivery. Customers could see their sends, understand a failure, add the missing funds, and get the gift on its way. Churn and support tickets fell sharply. Customers got the outcome they came for, and the business spent less effort rescuing individual sends.

Enterprise revenue nine months sooner

Privacy requirements were blocking enterprise deals and putting existing customer revenue at risk.

I built the initial system and worked with engineering teams to put it in place across the product while preserving their existing commitments. We shipped in three months against a year-long plan, unlocking $2M in enterprise ARR nine months sooner. The existing customer revenue we protected was worth more than the new contracts.

Watch that story.

Calendly: recover value from a product customers didn’t want

7% more signups with Polls.

The larger interview-scheduling effort hadn’t found a product customers wanted to buy. There was still something useful in it: helping a group find a time that worked for everyone. I turned that part of the work into Polls, recovering value from the investment and bringing more people into Calendly.

That didn’t make the original investment a success. It changed how I approach product decisions: get the customer’s answer before committing the team to the full build.

Salesloft: protect the conversation and reach more buyers

Keep the sales conversation from ending in dead air

Getting someone on the phone takes work. A few seconds of silence can lose them. In Salesloft’s call-conferencing experience, delays connecting the call created exactly that problem.

I reworked how the connection happened so people could join a conversation without the dead air that made them hang up. That protected the customer interaction the sales team had worked to earn. Shadowing Salesloft’s own sellers helped me recognize which product problems threatened their ability to sell.

$1M in ARR from buyers the product couldn’t serve

A buyer’s choice of CRM limited whether Salesloft could work for them. I helped remove that restriction, opening the product to customers who wanted to use it alongside the CRM they already relied on.

Silverpop / IBM: sell more value to customers already using the product

$5M in annual recurring revenue within six months.

Silverpop, part of IBM during my time there and now Acoustic, had customers with valuable email audiences. I built Social Audiences to put those lists to work across advertising platforms and bring the results back into Silverpop. Customers could reach the same audiences in more places through a product they already used.

I owned the product and the technology behind it. It gave existing customers another reason to buy from Silverpop and became a new recurring revenue stream.

Founder advising

• Ziora Copilot: faster progress with investors after working through development contracts, pricing, and investment terms.
• ProLine: less pressure on the initial re-platform build after adopting my recommended strategy.
• AffordablePlacements: Samantha James credits my counsel with helping her navigate a difficult cofounder decision with clarity and confidence.

What should change for your business

Ship What Sells brings product and technology under one owner for 90 days. We start with the business result you need: more customers buying, fewer leaving, or less cash disappearing into work that doesn’t pay off.

Then we work back to what needs to change for your customers and where the team should invest. I lead that work with your existing team and prepare an internal lead to keep it going.

If product work isn’t moving the business, let’s talk about the result you need.