Elevate the craft of product management to help companies maximize customer, shareholder and social value.
Our History
May 2014
Ben starts Foster Innovation soon after Opower's IPO.
January 2018
Rajesh joins Ben and they start capturing their best practices together.
March 2018
Ben joins GoCanvas as Chief Product Officer and Rajesh becomes Chief Product Advisor.
July 2019
Foster Innovation rebrands as Prodify Vision-Led Product Management.
35
Years of PM Experience
4
Startup Exits
55
Companies Advised
3,400
Hours with Clients
Our Founders
Rajesh Nerlikar
Co-Founder and Chief Product Advisor / Coach
I'm lucky to have learned product management from Ben and my startup / enterprise experiences. I started Prodify with Ben to share my learnings because, as I found, there aren't a lot of great resources for mastering the craft of product management.
Rajesh's Experience
Director of Workplace Products
Role: Managed $40M product portfolio with team of ~20 (Product Managers, Product Operations, Technical Project Managers)
Key Learnings: Enterprise product management, replatforming best practices and financial services
Senior Product Manager
Role: Led a team of 3 and helped grow revenue of a 3-product suite by over 500% in 2 years, launched a product that won Best in Show at Finovate.
Key Learnings: Encouraging a product culture of constant learning, using data science / machine learning strategically, transitioning a team and product suite through an acquisition and a divestiture.
Product Manager
Role: Improved the core Home Energy Reports product by increasing operational margins by 30% to prepare for IPO.
Key Learnings: PM best practices (from Ben), behavioral science, operational efficiency, how important design is to product success.
Ben Foster
Co-Founder and Principal Product Advisor / Coach
I am convinced Product is the single most important success driver for tech companies. I founded Prodify to share what I learned with companies like yours and help companies like yours realize their full potential.
Ben's Experience
Chief Product Officer
Role: Created a product-led company culture, evangelized product vision, established strong leadership, championed customer focus, led M&A and pricing strategy.
Key Learnings: Vision-led product management, modeling financial impact of product dev, organizing around customer outcomes, scaling to support hypergrowth, executive mentorship
VP of Product & UX
Role: Built the product organization from 5 to 30, customized a product-driven culture and process, helped grow revenue 10x and take the company public.
Key Learnings: Applied behavioral science, strategic UX, how to drive user engagement, the keys to operating as a successful executive and product leader.
Senior Product Manager
Role: Grew cross-sell up-sell and feature ARR by $100M in 2 years, personalized item pages, contributed to nearly every part of the eBay e-Commerce app, led a small PM team.
Key Learnings: Fundamentals of PM (from Marty Cagan), product strategy, hard work & discipline, metrics-driven decision making, marketplace dynamics, importance of good design, constructive interactions.
Our Product Advisors
David Jesse
Senior Product Advisor / Coach
Product management is at the heart of delivering innovation and great customer experiences for technology companies. It’s rewarding to help each client figure out the best product approach for their specific situation so they can be successful.
David's Experience
VP of Technology
Role: Led team of 85 including product, engineering, data science; improved customer satisfaction from 70 to 84/100 and gross margin by 5 percentage points
Key Learnings: Transitioning a scrappy team to be strategic and results oriented; leading multi-functional and distributed teams; systematically addressing customer pain points; e-commerce end to end customer experience
VP of Product and Design
Role: First company head of PM and design, built combined functions from four people to 25 in one year; helped establish foundation leading to Groupon’s IPO
Key Learnings: Scaling an organization, business and technology through hyper-growth; aligning team focus and ownership; importance of balancing speed and quality; personalization, funnel optimization and A/B testing
Group Product Manager
Role: Led team of six responsible for seller tools, listing formats and merchandising options, covering approximately 33% of company revenues
Key Learnings: Fundamentals of product management (with Marty Cagan -- and Ben!); marketplace and community dynamics; product strategy and roadmap planning
Margaret Jastrebski
Senior Product Advisor / Coach
Product is the glue between strategy and delivery, and the rigor of the practice can make or break the success of an organization. Being a part of Prodify means I can help many more companies avoid common pitfalls and nail their in-market success.
Margaret's Experience
SVP of Enterprise Product
Role: Built a 12 person product organization from scratch, which included the Retailer product vision, strategy, team, and operations of the function.
Key Learnings: Omnichannel Retail strategies and solutions; the importance of Forming/Norming/Storming when creating highly impactful, highly trusting teams
VP of Product
Role: Built and ran the Product Management team. Oversaw large-scale online identity data collection and matching products that spanned the US, Europe, and Japan
Key Learnings: Marketing technology; management and leadership best practices; Product + Engineering organizational alignment and growth strategies
Director of Product Strategy
Role: Built and ran all of Orbitz' private label products to achieve over a $1b in travel transactions annually. Key clients were large brands like Southwest and Amex
Key Learnings: Ecommerce; the function and fundamentals of product management and strategic planning; business development and consultative sales
Our Expert Network
In addition to product management advisors, we also have a trusted network of advisors and consultants who can be called into an engagement to provide their perspective in their respective areas of expertise, which includes:
Product Design
User Research
Product Marketing
Technology
Customer Success
Sales / Finance
Data Science / Analytics
People / Operations
Our Design Principles
Proactive
We don't wait for you to come to us with a challenge. We proactively suggest the best ways to leverage our time and expertise based on the situation.
Honest
Sometimes the truth is hard to hear. But we'll share it anyways because we know it's important for you or your company, product or customers to address.
Responsive
We know some issues are urgent, and make sure we have time reserved every day for ad hoc client requests and calls. We aim to respond to all messages within one business day.
Actionable
We're not a think tank. We built The Library of worksheets and templates to make our advice actionable. We also share our war stories so you understand what's driving the advice.
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