SaaS Startup Product Leader
For over a decade, I've been starting SaaS companies and working as an early product leader at venture-backed startups in Boston, San Francisco, and New York City.
I've been fortunate to learn from some of the best product leaders in the world, and love teaching and coaching others to help you go from your first ideas to first paying customers, and laying a foundation for a repeatable growth process.
I'm now doing a limited number of engagements to help early stage product leaders (Founders, 1st PMs, VPs, and Directors) with their biggest challenges.
Companies I've worked with:
How I Can Help You
If you're a B2B SaaS founder or product leader struggling in any of these areas, sign up so we can talk
Launch: Go from 0 to 10 Paying Customers
Whether you're brand new to an industry, or finally starting a company to solve a problem you've seen firsthand for years, translating that to a wave of first customers or design partners can be harder than it looks.
Are you struggling to zero-in on the MVP of your product, or find those early believers in you and your company? Do you know who to talk to, or what to ask?
I can help you:
- Find potential customers to interview and validate you're solving a key problem for them.
- Help you quickly and efficiently learn whether a potential customer is a great fit and why.
- Move customers from interested to signed, paying, and engaging with you and your team to launch your product.
- Identify the features that matter most to your customers, so you build the right things first, and avoid wasting precious team resources on the wrong things.
I have repeatedly navigated this stage as a founder and early employee. I launched two businesses of my own, one which was acquired in 2014, and the other, I launched and bootstrapped to over $10,000 in MRR before raising capital.
I also helped a venture-backed startup evaluate a new product which became a 7-figure-per-year addition to their bottom line, and provided valuable leads to their core product.
Liftoff: Grow from 10 to 100 Paying Customers
Congratulations! You have real customers buying your product. An amazing feat!
Do you know why? Do you see the path to go find dozens more companies like each of your early adopters?
I can help you:
- Understand why your early adopters bought into you and your product.
- Uncover how to find more customers like them.
- Determine which of your early adopters are your best customers.
- Identify channels to start experimenting with to attract customers.
- Source ideas to start creating inbound content that your target audience will love.
I was the first product manager at web analytics company KISSmetrics starting in 2012. I helped us scale up by focusing on the customers that loved our product most, and saw the beauty of how world class inbound marketing is the gift that keeps on giving for SaaS companies.
I then put those lessons into action again as I built Lighthouse, where we got hundreds of thousands of visitors per month to our blog, and then converted them to paying customers.
Escape Velocity: Building Great Products as You Scale
How will you maintain a close relationship with customers as you grow? Have you hired a great product team that works well together and with other departments?
Having a guide who has been there and done that can save you a lot of pain. Avoid costly mistakes that prevent you from reaching your next milestone, cause you to build the wrong things, and move too slowly by working with me.
I can help you:
- Set your PMs up for success as you step back as a product-minded founder by giving them the coaching you wish you had time for
- Get to the root cause of rapidly rising customer churn and create a plan to fix it
- Rapidly address issues with your product team shipping too slow, building the wrong things, or not collaborating well
- Improve onboarding to activate more of the leads your marketing team is working hard to generate
- Break down silos between departments to end animosity so that everyone is working together effectively for the benefit of your customers
As a founder and a head of product multiple times, I've seen the pains that come in both roles.
I've bootstrapped to hundreds of paying customers, and also been on venture-backed rockets helping us go from thousands to millions in revenue, while navigating all the dysfunction & broken processes that come with it.
How I Can Help You
If you're a B2B SaaS founder/executive or 1st PM / Head of Product
struggling in any of these areas, sign up so we can talk:
Too little time, too many problems...
Do you have PM(s) you lack the time to coach and develop that need real mentorship and support?
Or do you need help yourself as a busy founder or executive in charge of product? If you're not solid in your processes and strategy, it's hard to manage and lead others to do the same.
I can quickly identify core issues in you and your product team's processes and help implement fixes that gets everyone working better together.
Your best intentions, not the best results.
Are your product timelines always seeming to slip? Are your stakeholders frustrated, and constantly checking in on when things they *need* are going to ship?
When you finally do ship features, do they include more bugs or last minute changes than you hoped, or don’t meet customer needs & sales expectations?
I can help you rapidly repair your relationships with stakeholders, and get your team building features with the right level of clarity and communication for everyone.
Major metrics issues you must fix fast!
I've seen a lot in my 15 years as a product leader, and that includes fixing every critical metric you can imagine.
From high team turnover, to dangerously high customer churn, to poor product engagement or growth, the fate of your company rests on improving them.
I can help you and your team identify the root cause of your problems and implement a plan to turn it around.
Scale yourself as your company does, too
The tools, tactics, and skills that helped you be a scrappy product leader when you were 5 people at your startup doesn't work when you're 50 people with growing departments, fundraising milestones to hit, and a new class of executives around you.
If you want to be the 1st PM that grows to become the Head of Product and then VP of Product, you have to rapidly grow along with your company.
I can help identify your biggest weaknesses and help you level up, so you can grow into your dream role while your company succeeds.
A few of my best lessons learned struck a chord...
Click the tweet to see all 100 hard-earned lessons
What it's like working with me:
Mario Minnaert
Product Owner, Higher Learning Technologies
"Jason has coached me on customer development, communication, stakeholder management and countless other aspects of being a customer-driven product leader.
Because of his coaching, I’ve become our platform lead, the senior manager of customer experience and was voted as company MVP.
It’s clear that Jason has a learner’s mindset and is an expert on leadership, but above all, I’m constantly blown away by his ability to quickly understand my problems and his strong desire to help me learn and grow as a PM and person.
I’ve saved months and years of future mistakes from talking to Jason and listening to his advice."
Anne Vickman
VP Product & Support, Retention.com
"Jason was indispensable for my growth as VP of Product. His experience at startups and as a founder was a gift; I got to learn from his mistakes AND he gave me space at the right times to make my own. He also provided countless helpful resources, templates, and book recommendations over the years.
Jason takes a hands-on approach - from Jobs to be Done Interviews to setting up funnels in Mixpanel to editing interview scripts, he's willing to roll up his sleeves and spend time helping with both big picture strategy questions & quick, smaller projects. He is also a master of asking thoughtful questions: he gets straight to the heart of hard things, while knowing when + how to push back to challenge assumptions as well as when to listen & be empathetic.
I would 110% recommend Jason to any product leader looking for guidance and support."
Nate Klaiber
Senior Software Engineer, KISSmetrics
"Jason's passion for customers was evident from our very first conversation. He caught me up on the product, current projects, and where he was looking for the future.
His decisions were always driven by empirical evidence. He pointed me to the tools he uses to receive direct feedback from our customers. He then used that information to help inform decisions on where the product should move.
He pointed me to many great resources that allowed me to become more educated in my thought processes around the things we were trying to accomplish. Jason was the Product Manager for KISSmetrics, but more importantly he was a constant advocate for the customer on the other side of the product."
John Paul Narowski
Founder & CTO, ClickFlow
"Jason gave me very focused and actionable feedback. He is helping me build the entire cust dev process from the ground up.
Discussing each phase has really helped us stay focused and eliminate the early mistakes."
Ruben Guerrero
CEO, SproutFi (YC S21)
"Our head of product has gotten a ton of value and has significantly matured as a product leader while working with Jason.
I appreciate all the support and guidance he shared with him, and recommend anyone who wants to grow their product leaders to work with Jason."
Ryo Chiba
Co-founder, TINT
"Jason thoughtfully reviewed my challenge and provided the insights and validation that I was looking for.
I appreciate the questions he asked to better understand my situation before jumping in with advice, and I won’t hesitate to work with him again in the future."
Pardhu Gunnam
CEO & Founder, Metaphor Data
"Jason was able to come in, overhaul both how I sought out customers to interview, and how we would ask the right questions to identify good fits for our Design Partner Program. He provided scripts, templates, and coached me on how to improve my processes.
With his help we now have a promising group of companies and a clear path to launching our product. I also see how my interviews with customers apply to our product, marketing, and future sales efforts.
He saved me months of trial and error on my own."
Jonathan Cordeau
Founder & CEO, LaunchTrack
"Jason brought invaluable knowledge and perspective to our team as we explored the essential product/market fit question.
He was proactive, knowledgable and spent the time necessary to truly understand our product.
Jason is not only passionate about how a company interacts with customers, but more importantly, about how a company can shape their strategy based upon customer input. I highly recommended him."
