Dan Mascola

I conducted a user persona project among our 50,000 food truck consumers. The project consisted of creating a qualitative and quantitative survey plan which we did in just 2 months and under budget. We interviewed 150 guests in-person and got 1,000 responses through online polls. There were many surprising insights, one of which was that many people don't mind standing in line at food trucks! People enjoy spending some time in the sun and it gives them a break from their desk and computer. These behavioral insights and personas laid the foundation for our new mobile app strategy which changed the way consumers engaged with our product and company.

Before I took over the product team, there was no formal product development process. Priorities were changing daily, scope creep was rampant, and communication between product and engineering was chaotic. As you'd expect, this resulted in lots of bugs and team frustration.

I implemented a Kanban PM process with physical card wall so the product and design team could stay organized (we later transitioned to Aha). Not only did this reduce the crushing mental burden that existed before, but it doubled our velocity. I also implemented weekly "success/failure" sessions with the broader product, design, and engineering team. This created a culture of open discussion which led to process improvement and innovation.

With our 3,000 SMB customers on our booking platform, we had no way of tracking user behavior. I brought in Pendo, which provides product analytics as well as in-app notifications. Pendo data helped us understand our who our superusers were, common UI pain points, and provided a baseline to track and improve engagement. Pendo's notification features also enhanced our walk-through training modals and allowed us to track and improve NPS.

The company's initial product and target audience was mainly tour companies (walking tours, food, city, harbor, etc.). The tour market was crowded and very competitive. After launching a light rentals product (bike rentals, boat, kayak, car), it became clear we had some product differentiation. I conducted extensive market research into the rentals market and combined these market insights with revenue analysis of our existing customer base. The results were clear and I pitched to focus more on rentals, which our product and marketing teams promptly did. I executed a 6-month go-to-market campaign in this market which resulted in doubling our customer acquisition and 10x our average revenue per customer.