David Bialer

I was initially contracted as a consultant for Mozilla to write the PRD for Firefox OS (operating system), a mobile operating system based on web technology. This resulted in two major international mobile operators committing tens of millions of dollars to launch cell phones with this technology into emerging markets.

I was then asked to do another project: define the app store for Firefox OS. I had about five months until the launch of mobile phones in South America. I was asked to join Mozilla full-time to drive the project. In 2.5 years, we launched in emerging markets in South America, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, India, and China.

This project included many stakeholders and special portals for each: a developer portal to submit and price apps, an app review workflow portal, mobile operator portals for analytics, an editorial portal for online editors of the app store, and user applications for Firefox OS, Android, and Firefox Desktop.

Good.co developed a personality measurement tool, like Meyer-Briggs on steroids, and built a database of over two million personalities. Using proprietary algorithms that utilized machine learning, this information was used to predict how well a person would match a job, a manager, a team, and a company.

Additionally, for existing-working teams, we developed a method to check the health of a team and provide actionable insights into improving the success of a team-based on research and principles developed by Google.

SensorWeb was a project that consisted of devices that measure air quality and a back end to collect the data, and a website to display air quality.

Senior executives asked me to lead a project that was started by engineers but had been flailing for lack of leadership and direction. I was asked to check it for market fit and then to take it forward to a hardware and software prototype. The intent was to build 10,000 devices and distribute these to people in densely polluted cities.

Using Lean startup techniques, I performed a one-week market validation using Facebook Ads and a landing page where potential users could show interest. The initial target market was Taipei, where air quality coming in from mainland China was a problem. The concept validated where we had a high interest in obtaining one of the devices.

Using customer input, we built a hardware prototype of 10 units as well as a website to display air quality that was populated by data from devices.

My role was to evaluate a market fit, develop user stories, create product roadmaps, prioritize features based and drive the creation of the prototype. The project did not continue past this point because of a change in the company’s strategic direction.