Justin Whittaker, Product Manager in Salt Lake City, UT, United States
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Justin Whittaker

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Location
Salt Lake City, UT, United States
Toptal Member Since
May 9, 2020

At Toptal, Justin is both a product manager and a project manager and is also a product marketer with over a decade of experience leading teams to create and market B2B and B2C products used by millions of people in the US, Canada, and Europe. Products Justin has built have powered experiences for brands like Disney, DIRECTV, Nintendo, FOX, NBC Universal, TELUS, Huffington Post, and Time Warner.

Mobile ApplicationsB2BMobile AdsStakeholder EngagementProject ManagementMinimum Viable Product (MVP)Product OwnerSoftware as a Service (SaaS)Product ManagementLeanTechnical Project ManagementMobile App DevelopmentStakeholder ManagementCloudHead of ProductIdeation

Project Highlights

i.TV Platform and White Label
Led the development and creation of i.TV's platform and white-label practice.
TELUS Optik TV Smart Remote | Enterprise Implementation Project
Led the design, development, launch, and operation of a successful white label and integration project for the TELUS Optik IPTV service.
tvtag
Led my team to deliver a product that reached over ten million people every month and that every major TV network in the US and Canada came to rely on to drive tune-in and engagement with their TV shows.

Expertise

Agile Product ManagementChief Product Officer (CPO)Design SprintsIdeation WorkshopsInnovationMobile AppsProduct MarketingProduct Strategy

Work Experience

SVP Product and Operations

2023 - PRESENT
Wetx
  • Applied for and established the First Water Bank of Utah (FWBU). The FWBU is the 1st statutory water bank in Utah.
  • Acted as product owner for a blockchain-powered water rights and water shares asset management software.
  • Led the development and launch of Water Savers, a gamification solution to help municipalities motivate their residents to conserve water.

Agile Product and Project Manager

2022 - 2023
The Forward Thinking Company
  • Hired by TFTC as the 1st product/project manager to manage the company's project and product offering. The product serves a multi-billion dollar industrial agricultural foods producer.
  • Set up Agile and Scrum project management system for a distributed team of developers working across several time zones. Repeatedly delivered on sprint goals on time and with high quality.
  • Integrated myself into the team, won the trust of the client's customer, and was entrusted to work directly with the client's customer without involvement from the principals.

Multifunctional Project Manager and Product Owner

2022 - 2022
Commonwealth Financial Network
  • Served as a product owner and project lead for multiple run-the-business products and initiatives, including robotic process automation, Microsoft SharePoint application development, and public website support and development.
  • Trained my team in Agile, Scrum, and Kanban methodologies as part of the enterprise's efforts to transform standard company processes.
  • Co-led a project to migrate mission-critical applications from an on-premises server to the cloud.

Consulting Product Owner

2020 - 2022
Jeri
  • Scoped, created, and launched an on-demand (PRN) staffing platform with iOS, Android, and web apps for skilled nursing, home health, hospice, assisted living, and other care facilities.
  • Collaborated with the design team to turn sketches and product requirements into high-fidelity designs.
  • Recruited and hired the software development team.
  • Set up project management and development processes.
  • Collaborated with the team to implement a new service offering for augmenting in-house recruiting teams with nearshore recruiting assistants to lower costs and improve speed-to-hire.

Product Manager | Project Manager

2020 - 2022
WaitWhat
  • Joined the project as project manager to lead a team of mobile and back-end developers, designers, and QAs with the challenge of bringing fully-featured iOS and Android apps to market for a high-profile customer in the space of four months.
  • Led all aspects of the project according to Agile and Scrum principles.
  • Provided product leadership and direction for the mobile apps and back-end.

Product Manager

2021 - 2021
Manhattan Digital
  • Gathered and defined requirements for the launch of a new initiative with a top game console manufacturer.
  • Led the Agile software development delivery team and ensured requirements were translated into easy-to-understand user stories.
  • Delivered the project on time and within budget.

Adjunct Professor

2021 - 2021
J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU - LawX
  • Designed and taught a course to help law students learn and internalize design thinking concepts.
  • Led law students through the design sprint process to ideate, research, prototype, and deliver a new law-based product/service concept to market within the course of a semester.
  • Delivered an impactful solution to market to help people who are eligible, to receive criminal record expungements.

Consulting Product Owner

2020 - 2021
WETx.io (Freelance)
  • Brought the WETx Dashboard product from conceptual design to production-ready. Led the design, customer research, recruiting, software development, and implementation.
  • Developed and implemented a new product and service offering for WETx, called WETx Cloud. Led the design, customer research, recruiting, software development, and implementation.
  • Executed plans to develop a strategy around a water banking system for municipalities, regional water and sewer districts, irrigation companies, and federal water conservancy districts.

Executive Vice President, Business Solutions

2018 - 2020
Radiant - Video Messaging Solutions for B2B, Learning and Higher Education
  • Developed and implemented a customer acquisition strategy for the pre-launch of B2C streaming app, SAY. Effort resulted in a cost per acquisition that was more than 25% below industry standard.
  • Oversaw product development, business modeling, and marketing launch of Kinmundo.com for sister organization, BN Media.
  • Developed three different asynchronous video streaming concepts targeting; biopharma sales training, a job reporting tool for field services, and a learning tool for higher ed.

CEO

2015 - 2018
Invisible Home
  • Launched an eCommerce Shopify store selling high-end, designer home goods and furniture to customers in the US, Canada, and Europe.
  • Developed a successful social marketing strategy as part of the GTM plan. Targeted design and architecture enthusiasts that garnered nearly 10,000 followers on Instagram.
  • Executed a paid media customer acquisition strategy using Google AdWords, Facebook, and Instagram ads.
  • Developed a product line for Invisible Home called The Fleet, a storage system in a box designed and manufactured in Scandinavia from eco-friendly materials.

Chief Product Officer

2015 - 2018
Yours.co - AI-powered Home Movie Streaming Service and Optical Media Storage
  • Recruited the product design and software team and introduced an agile software and product development practice to the company.
  • Led company rebranding efforts from MDISC to Yours.co.
  • Launched two new products and raised a $4 million Series A round from TPP Capital Advisors to build and scale the business.
  • Hired to ideate new digital product ideas, create proofs-of-concept, and launch new products.

Executive Vice President, Business Solutions and Marketing

2008 - 2015
i.TV - TV Discovery and Social TV Platform and Second Screen TV Ad Network.
  • Built and led a 35-person team comprised of product managers, designers, software engineers, and marketing, business development, and editorial staff in Utah and New York City.
  • Managed enterprise-scale software development contracts and B2B platform licensing with Nintendo, AOL, Huffington Post, TELUS, and DIRECTV.
  • Directed a highly successful joint marketing program with the world's top entertainment brands (ABC, NBC, FOX, AMC, HBO, and Time Warner), resulting in tens of millions of social media shares and hundreds of millions of social media impressions.
  • Co-created all product concepts, from early-stage ideas to user testing, designing and building the software, and executing GTM plans and the market launch. (i.TV for iOS and Android, tvtag, Nintendo TVii, AOL TV, TELUS Optik Smart Remote, and more).
  • Owned i.TV B2C and B2B marketing and branding, PR (driving coverage in NYT, WaPo, and The Verge), user acquisition (more than 7 million downloads), agency leadership, events and trade shows, partner marketing, email marketing, and paid media marketing.
  • Led pre-acquisition negotiations and post-acquisition merger activities and integrated GetGlue's team and technology into i.TV's operations when i.TV acquired GetGlue in 2012. Managed customer relationships with TV networks and advertisers.

Account Executive

2007 - 2008
Connect Marketing
  • Placed on top accounts with Symantec and Siemens Enterprise Communications.
  • Assisted clients in gaining earned media coverage. Drove awareness around strategic communications objectives.
  • Positioned executives as thought leaders and drove coverage in publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CIO, and MSNBC.

Operations Director, EMEA

2004 - 2007
Bridge Atlantik
  • Led successful European launches for multiple clients of a business development and marketing firm, including security, edtech, home goods, distributed computing, and HVAC.
  • Established new sales and distribution channels for clients across Europe, including public sector procurement organizations and pan-European distributors.
  • Managed successful marketing and public relations campaigns to establish clients as leaders in their respective fields, garnering coverage with top-tier media outlets worldwide.
  • Oversaw business development efforts to sign on European reference customers for our edtech and security clients as part of the market launch.

i.TV Platform and White Label

https://www.theinvisible.co/i_tv_platform

Led the development and creation of i.TV's platform and white-label practice.

ABOUT
The i.TV Platform powered electronic program guide, DVR control, TV remote control experiences for TV providers, and media companies.

MISSION
To lead the team that productized and licensed i.TV consumer offerings for B2B customers.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Led the design and development of multiple white-label versions of i.TV for TV providers and media companies. Successfully integrated services and data from partners like Roku, TiVo, TMS, Amazon, and Apple. Repeatedly delivered quality work and products that resulted in multi-year contract renewals and tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Led the design and build of i.TV's ad platform that served hundreds of millions of ad impressions and delivered successful campaigns for brands like Pepsi, Microsoft, and Disney.

TELUS Optik TV Smart Remote | Enterprise Implementation Project

https://www.theinvisible.co/telus_osr

Led the design, development, launch, and operation of a successful white label and integration project for the TELUS Optik IPTV service.

ABOUT
TELUS Optik TV Smart Remote apps for iOS and Android were powered by the i.TV platform and offered TELUS Optik IPTV customers a TV guide (EPG), DVR control, remote control, and rich TV metadata for all TV shows available through the service.

MISSION
To lead the product development and integration team to build and deploy a white-label version of the i.TV platform to TELUS Optik customers.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Built and led a dedicated agile product development team to customize the i.TV platform to the client's specifications. Established a QA program aligned with the client's internal QA and release management processes. Consistently delivered stable, feature-rich, and performant experiences to the client's end users.

tvtag

https://www.theinvisible.co/tvtag

Led my team to deliver a product that reached over ten million people every month and that every major TV network in the US and Canada came to rely on to drive tune-in and engagement with their TV shows.

ABOUT
tvtag was a social TV engagement and advertising platform for iOS, Android, and white-label partners.

MISSION
Create a second screen, social TV experience for consumers that would drive massive engagement around TV shows and televised sporting events. Develop tvtag as a platform that would power experiences for TV networks, tech companies, and brand advertisers.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
tvtag content reached over ten million people every month and drove one-third of Twitter traffic around primetime scripted TV. Led the design and development of an in-app experience for sporting events called Run or Pass that synchronized second-screen content with the live TV broadcast. Nearly every major TV network in the US and Canada utilized the tvtag platform to drive tune-in and engagement around their shows. tvtag's white-label partners included DIRECTV, Nintendo, and Time Warner.

Kinmundo Proof of Concept

https://www.theinvisible.co/kinmundo

Led a product and marketing team to develop and launch a proof-of-concept product.

ABOUT
Kinmundo, meaning family world, is inhabited by 16 different family cultures. Take Kinmundo’s expert-designed Family Culture Quiz to find out which is yours. It measures your family on multiple dimensions that define family life. Each of your family members' quiz results is combined to determine which of the 16 cultures your family lives in. Why is family culture important? Because making positive changes from within your existing family dynamic is much easier than trying to change the way your family works completely.

MISSION
Develop, brand, and launch a scientifically valid family assessment tool to help families understand their culture.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Led a team of product managers, designers, software developers, and marketers to create and launch a proof-of-concept product for Radiant. After Kinmundo's launch, I led the team through a design sprint to ideate, prototype, and test new approaches to monetizing Kinmundo. The result was a product extension called 21 & Done to help families and individuals develop positive behavioral habits in 21 days.

Yours.co | Video Streaming Service

https://www.theinvisible.co/yours

Developed two new products for Yours.co. The company was able to raise $4 million in Series A funding based on these products.

ABOUT
Yours.co automatically transformed video and photos in the camera roll into long-form home movies. The movies were streamed via the web, mobile, and OTT apps on Fire TV, Roku, and Apple TV, as well as archive-grade DVDs and Blu-rays.

MISSION
Lead Yours.co (formerly M-DISC) through a digital transformation process in preparation for new rounds of venture capital funding.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Innovated two new products, M-DISC archive service and Yours.co. Recruited, built, and led software development and technical fulfillment teams. Led a robotic automation project for the M- DISC (Yours.co) fulfillment center. Led the rebranding of M-DISC to Yours.co. Instituted agile software development processes. The company raised $4 million in Series A funding from TPP Capital Advisors.

SAY | Video Messaging Applications for Business and Education

Led the SAY Business Solutions product team, tasked with leveraging the SAY video messaging platform for B2B applications.

SAY is a video messaging platform for Android and iOS that enables users to communicate and engage around digital content via video messages. It's similar to Slack but with video messages.

SAY is part of the Bonneville Communications company.

Branding Projects

https://www.theinvisible.co/brandmarketing

Led multiple brand identity and brand marketing projects throughout my career.

Throughout my career, I directly led efforts to create new brand identities and rebrand existing products and companies.

At i.TV, I worked with world-class designer Adrian Pulfer to create the i.TV brand identity. At tvtag, I led the team that created the brand identity and implemented the brand into i.TV-owned user experiences, as well as all tvtag partner experiences like DirecTV, Nintendo, ABC, NBC, and HBO. At M-DISC, I was tasked with rebranding the company to Yours.co.

i.TV for iOS and Android | TV EPG App

https://www.theinvisible.co/i_tv_platform

Co-led the creation of i.TV mobile apps. In the iOS App Store, i.TV achieved first place in the overall ranking and a top 100 ranking in its category.

i.TV for iOS and Android was the number one TV guide app in North America for nearly seven years before it was acquired by another company. As a co-founder of i.TV, I co-created the app, including the following features:
• TV guide.
• DVR scheduling.
• Remote control for TiVo, Roku, DirecTV, and TELUS Optik TV.
• Entertainment news and other content.
• Social TV features.

WETx Cloud - Consulting Product Owner

https://www.wetx.io/

Developed a new product offering for water service districts, irrigation companies, manufacturing, and industrial customers and municipalities to help these organizations inventory, understand, and manage their water resources and infrastructure.

WETx is a blockchain-based technology platform that helps water special service districts, agriculture and irrigation companies, M&I and municipalities to inventory and manage their water resources and the infrastructure that delivers water to their customers.

I was hired as a consulting product owner to work with the executive team and customers to discover customer needs and design and build a solution to fit those needs. I also recruited and led the software development team and hired and managed a technology services fulfillment team.
2002 - 2004

Master's Degree in European Union Policy

University of Birmingham - Birmingham, United Kingdom

1995 - 2002

Bachelor's Degree in German

Brigham Young University - Provo, UT, USA

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