I build the parts of a product company most people never see, so the parts they do see can get better.
I've spent most of my career on the work underneath the product: the platforms, planning, and habits that decide how well a company builds. I came to product through operations, programs, and strategy, and it shows in how I work. When I look at a roadmap, I'm usually hunting for the thing that would make the next ten features easier.
Today I'm a platform product manager at Zillow, working on identity and personalization. On the side I build apps and small AI tools at Sprout Works, mostly to keep my own hands in the work. Whatever I'm building, I want it to fit how people already work instead of asking them to change for it.
“The best products don't just solve one problem. They make the next set of problems easier to solve.”
Most of my work sits a layer below the feature: the shared capabilities that make the next product easier to ship. When it's done well it compounds, and every team that builds on it moves a little faster than the one before.
Planning, portfolio governance, and the reviews that decide what gets funded. It's unglamorous work, and it's often what decides whether a strategy survives its first quarter. I've built it inside large organizations and once from scratch, as a new function.
When a decision stalls, I'd rather build a rough version than write another doc about it. A prototype gives a team something real to react to, and AI has made that cheap enough to do all the time. It's also why I keep a small studio on the side.
A personalized experience starts as a story about the customer: what a product should know about someone, and what it should do with that. I like working on both halves, shaping that narrative until teams agree on it and building the identity and personalization infrastructure that makes it real.
Sprout Works is my small side studio — where I build practical software and AI-enabled tools for the fun of it.