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
September 2020
Ben and Rajesh write best-selling book, Build What Matters, on how to become product-driven.
2021-2023
Team continues to grow with new advisors and consultants. Sara becomes Managing Director.
June 2023
Launches Product Leadership Video Course, in partnership with Gigantic.
+
Years of PM Experience
Startup Exits
Companies Advised
Hours with Clients
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Head of Product
Role: Built a professional product organization at this hyper-growth behavioral health company including establishing their first in-house design team.
Key learnings: Healthtech product management, employer-sponsored benefits, marketplace dynamics, building machine learning products.
Head of Product
Role: Reimagined and rebuilt their consumer robo-advice product into a white-labeled B2B2C suite of products.
Key learnings: Fintech product management, product leadership post-acquisition (by BlackRock), Agile transformation, B2B2C, design systems, algorithm product management, behavioral economics.
Chief Product Officer
Role: In addition to a complete rebrand, I co-led a product pivot that grew to become the company’s core business offering and was the foundation for its eventual acquisition by OpenText.
Key learnings: Complete rebranding, managing competing business models, product pivot, Enterprise product management
Sara Bial Zalowitz
Senior Product Advisor / Coach
"Product Management enables teams to have strategic alignment and make decisions that prioritize the customer needs and business outcomes. When I began my career in Product, I knew I had found my passion. I love working with clients to help them grow their passion for product by seeing the impact that Vision-Led Product Management can have on their business."
Chief Product Officer
Role: Built and ran the Product Management team at Rent the Runway, inclusive of product design (UX/UI), and user testing. Drove the product strategy and innovation. Key member of the executive team.
Key Learnings: Team development and change management of creating and integrating a product discipline into the company; product, engineering and design organizational alignment
VP of Digital and Tech Innovation
Role: Led Digital and Technology Innovation with a mission to deliver innovations that ensure the enterprise and brands are differentiated, relevant, and competitive.
Key Learnings: Hospitality Industry, Design thinking, Process in a matrixed organization, Voice technology
VP of Product
Role: Owned product strategy and user experience; key contributor to the corporate strategy. Led a team of product managers, product designers (UX/UI), and user researchers.
Key Learnings: Marketplace dynamics; Organizational restructure enabling strategic squads of product, engineering, and design; Global organization team structures and processes.
David Jesse
Senior Product Advisor / Coach and Fractional Product Executive
"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."
Head of Product, International
Role: Oversaw product management and localization for expansion into new geographic markets; enabled country improvements and partnerships across three-sided marketplace.
Key Learnings: Starting with first principles to understand customer problems before defining a solution; focusing on understanding and improving inputs in order to drive outcomes; balancing product and operational testing to validate ideas.
Chief Product Officer
Role: First company head of PM and design; grew team from four to 14 during period of 4x user and revenue growth; Fetch has a 4.8 rating and is consistently ranked in top 10 apps for Shopping in the App Store.
Key Learnings: Driving high retention via simple, frictionless experience and targeted incentives; applying behavioral design principles to reinforce product interactions.
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
Keith Cowing
Senior Product Advisor / Coach and Fractional Product Executive
"I love helping people be more productive and successful. I advise companies in B2B, ed tech, health tech, fin tech, and AI. This can mean better articulating the product vision, strategy, and roadmap, improving velocity and execution, clarifying roles and responsibilities, improving decision-making, training and up-leveling the team, or simply lending another pair of hard-working hands. "
Chief Product Officer
Role: Rebuilt and streamlined the software behind Vesta’s telehealth services. Oversaw key strategic shifts in product strategy and approach, helping fuel 50%+ growth in revenue and double digit improvements in gross margin. Led and revamped the product, engineering and design teams.
Key Learnings: Building technology to power a services organization. Rapidly improving a P&L and making strategic budget tradeoffs.
VP of Product
Role: Led the product team responsible for OncoCloud, Flatiron’s flagship software foroncologists, from early stages through the $2.1B acquisition by Roche. Scaled the product team from 6 to 25 as we grew revenue by 5X.
Key Learnings: Assessing, hiring, and growing top product talent. Designing product organizations, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and improving decision-making. Crafting a vision, strategy and roadmap that resonates internally and externally. Healthcare, oncology, data science.
Adjunct Professor
MBA program: Teach Product Management to 150 graduate students in NYC and Ithaca.
Executive education: Facilitate leadership summits for top product and engineering leaders, have trained 5K+ product managers globally..
Key Learnings: Simplifying and teaching product and leadership to audiences ranging from recent college graduates to Fortune 50 executives
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Rami Alhamad
Sr. Product Advisor / Coach
"As a startup founder, I am obsessive about driving focus and alignment between the product team and the customer. Everything starts with ensuring that every line of code or circuit board designed is informed by the end-user. At the same time, I know how to balance the strategic needs of the business with the customer discovery process."
Founder
Role: Took a hardware wearable startup from vision all the way to a market leader with over 150+ pro sports teams as clients including the SF 49ers, Cleveland Cavaliers, USOC, Tokyo Giants, Stanford, Ohio State, and others. Evolved the business from one-time purchase to a hardware-enabled subscription model. PUSH was acquired by WHOOP in 2021..
Key Learnings: Enterprise product management, hardware development, coordinating product with marketing and sales, product discovery and roadmapping. Strategic partnerships.
VP of Product, Hardware & Sensors
Role: Managed the hardware development of next-gen WHOOP devices. Mapped out the R&D roadmap for internal development as well as key labs and external research partners. Coordinated closely with the CPO on all matters tied to software and hardware development post-launch of WHOOP 4.0
Key Learnings: Consumer product management, research and development management, strategic partnerships
Laurie Cordova
Senior Product Advisor / Coach, Recruiter, and Fractional Product Executive
“There is nothing more rewarding to me than unlocking the potential of a great Product leader or team. No two product teams or companies are the same, and my role is to help customize the best approach to maximize the value my clients can deliver to their companies.”
VP, Product
Role: Led Product Management, Design and Innovation function; responsible for rebuild and key user experience improvements for core platform; oversaw Product due diligence for IPO
Key Learnings: Reducing feature and function waste of rapidly expanding product portfolio, the importance of including data science in planning and evaluation earlier than you’d think, and the high value and low risk option of introducing low/no code tools to productize services.
Chief Product Officer
Role: Led Product Management and Design; established a User Research function; Rebuilt customer portal designed to increase customer retention; Introduced Buy/Build/Partner model to team to encourage only building differentiating IP/assets
Key Learnings: Behavioral science dynamics of retaining customers for “invisible” service, Establishing and running pilot programs for IoT hardware, funnel optimization, best practices for effective quarterly planning.
VP of Product
Role: Led Product Management and Customer Support; Built and introduced new product line, CurrentMD, to market in less than 6 months
Key Learnings: Creating the model for production when user experience and content are being created at the same time, understanding the best blend of primary and secondary market research, and discovering best practices to keep adult learners engaged with the product.
Co-founder
Role: Worked on a 0-1 computer vision AI hardware solution for quick checkout. Drove the team to find product-market fit. Key member of executive team.
Key Learnings: Product development and team building at the earliest stages of a startup. Quick iteration on complex AI and hardware products to rapidly respond to design partner feedback.
Head of Product, Walmart Labs
Role: Owned seller solutions product line, created AI products that enabled sellers to increase their GMV on Walmart's Seller Marketplace.
Key Learnings: Driving large and cross-functional AI initiatives at a Fortune 1 company with stakeholders across orgs and functions (product, marketing, business development, etc.)
Product, Podcast Voice + Search
Role: Own podcast search and voice, and AI special projects across the podcast organization and Amazon Music.
Key Learnings: Applying the generative AI tech stack across several different but interrelated areas within a company. Building and scaling 0-1 products that leverage the latest technical advancements in response to customer needs.
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."
VP of Product
Role: Lead a team of 9 PMs and 2 designers at a Series B startup working to improve the resilience of the agricultural supply chain by engaging farmers to adopt practices to deliver sustainability outcomes like lower carbon emissions.
Key Learnings: AI product management, scale up product leadership, managing a platform with science at its core.
Fractional VP of Product
Role: Led a team of 3.5 PMs and 2 designers at a Series A digital health startup whose mission was to make cognition the fifth vital sign using a innovative new mobile app that measured brain health.
Key Learnings: International product strategy, the digital health market (including regulatory), managing designers.
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.
Chief Product Officer
Role: Expanded the team 10x and the company valuation 15x, hit record high retention, established a strong product vision, and groomed new leaders to inherit the team.
Key Learnings: How to balance the day-to-day (defense) with visionary leadership (offense), expanding the definition of "Product" to include pricing, engagement services, and more.
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.
Product Design
User Research
Product Marketing
Technology
Customer Success
Sales / Finance
Data Science / Analytics
People / Operations
