Michael Poythress
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Portland, OR, United States
Toptal member since March 12, 2019
Michael excels at engineering technology, interacting with colleagues, and at developing processes to solve everyday problems for people and organizations—both large and small. As a proficient Agile product manager and design leader, he has been planning and delivering web and mobile projects for business and end consumers for the past 18 years. He also has extensive experience in strategic architecture and end-to-end solution creation.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Big Data
- Business Process Automation
- Creative Problem Solving
- Product Ownership
- Remote Team Leadership
- Software Engineering
- eCommerce
Work Experience
Product Manager | Product Owner
RetailMakr (eCommerce Platform)
- Created a web-based, mission-critical business platform used by thousands of businesses.
- Set project strategy, direction, and priorities based on extensive user and stakeholder interviews.
- Managed the development roadmap and a team of engineers to enhance and support a web-based software platform with 99.999% uptime.
- Architected a machine learning system to automatically update product selling prices based on massive amounts of data from many sources for millions of products daily.
- Defined company-wide tools and processes to implement Agile methodology across all teams using tools including, but not limited to, Jira, Aha!, Asana, Trello, and Slack, as the company grew from processing 0 up to 10,000 orders per month.
- Grew the company from 1 to over 25 remote employees in two years and drove the development of associated processes and organizational structure for lean, continuous improvement.
- Selected and trained new team members, establishing an employee onboarding process that got new employees productive within two weeks.
- Raised outside investment successfully through authoring and presenting business overview materials and due diligence documentation.
- Maintained business awareness of the board of directors and company executives through regular progress and timeline reporting.
- Led the creation of real-time data dashboards to support all aspects of the business, using visualization tools such as Mode Analytics.
Digital Product Manager, CTO
Brickstr (Cause Marketing Application and Network)
- Documented project features and requirements, user profiles, and user stories through in-depth business analysis and discussions with founders.
- Built an agreed-upon project plan, timeline, and budget in coordination with business owners.
- Designed overall platform and system architecture, and produced an interactive prototype of the mobile app.
- Deliver a native iOS app and web application and API server from concept to beta within three months, via two remote development teams working simultaneously.
Project Manager | Owner
Company 52 (Web Development Agency)
- Led more than 70 web and mobile projects to completion for 50+ clients in a variety of industries.
- Created and launched six online SaaS (software as a service) products.
- Built and led a team of designers and programmers (all remote) to execute on multiple projects simultaneously.
- Collaborate with client visionaries and technical specialists to deliver project estimates, proposals, and plans.
- Handled all of the operational aspects of the business, including strategy, resource management, team development, and customer contacts.
- Coordinated closely with clients and the engineering team to complete each product according to specifications, budget, and schedule (often with tight deadlines).
Product Owner | Founder
Glarity Media Store
- Developed a business model and web application from the ground up to produce an online media store—similar to iTunes—for a niche market.
- Produced an operational prototype, with a remote team of ten developers.
- Recruited the team and managed team culture, leading a team of ~ten people.
- Set up and maintained the physical server infrastructure required for the project.
- Raised seed funding.
Project History
Amazon Strategy and Execution for Professional Beauty | Skin Care Brand
Led an internal team focused on grabbing more digital shelf space and market awareness, exclusively on Amazon, guiding both strategy and execution.
• Helped make Amazon the fastest-growing—and second-largest—of all the brand's distribution channels
• Achieved and maintained over 25% YoY growth via the Amazon channel from 2020 to 2024 (and still going)
• Used data, AI, hundreds of experiments, and analysis to identify proven incremental growth opportunities. Then, leveraged those with millions of advertising dollars, validating success constantly along the way
• Optimized every facet of the Amazon relationship for success—from brand management, relationship negotiation, organizing listing content, inventory planning, and paid advertising—documenting it all with written playbooks
• Helped keep this brand in the top three most efficient performers measured against 6+ sister brands across the metrics of ROAS, ACOS, growth rate, and conversion rate
• Accomplished all of this without using any product discounts, in keeping with brand policies
Multi-channel Online Sales Platform
Produced an eCommerce marketplace sales-and-data platform for small and mid-size businesses.
Our team developed an elegant and user-friendly interface for a very complex set of tools used to do a variety of tasks:
• Manage products.
• Publish product listings on marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, and eBay.
• Provide customer service at scale
• Manage all aspects of shipping and product return logistics
Customers are acquired through a distributed, commissioned direct sales team.
This business now successfully handles all aspects of eCommerce sales for hundreds of companies, using algorithms, machine learning, APIs, financial processing, security, reporting, and big data; additional features and capabilities are also being continually added.
ANS: Business Management Platform
Transformed manual business processes (paper, email, phone, fax) into a completely digital workflow.
• Increased efficiency of a completely distributed staff by more than 50%
• Reduced costs and mistakes by at least 25%
• Grew revenue and profit by removing growth bottlenecks and offering new client services enabled by the new digital workflow
The project was a success—meeting or exceeding every goal the client had, and is still in use today.
Custom CRM for BBVA Compass
Led development of a complex, internal CRM for tracking accounts and leads in a high-security, enterprise bank environment.
The application tracks thousands of data points for each of 7 million+ accounts and passed a SAS 70 (now SSAE 16) audit.
As the product manager, I coordinated the efforts of multiple teams and vendors as we prioritized and delivered a long list of mission-critical features.
There were numerous stakeholders and expectations to manage—in a high-stakes, high-stress scenario—but we did it successfully and launched the application on time.
Inventory Management System
Introduced mission-critical inventory management capabilities to an existing enterprise platform—overnight.
I led programmers to rapidly deliver a functional MVP and the stock-taker team was able to begin using it in the warehouse the very next day.
This inventory management system has been continually enhanced and is still in active use, now serving multiple warehouses with a unique high-speed and efficient system.
Bonlavi Products
Brought two brand new physical products to market for a new consumer brand.
The products were a profitable success, selling out multiple production runs, and company was ultimately hand-picked by Amazon as a back-end supplier.
To Your Success: Business Management Application
Removed barriers to growth by replacing seven separate software tools with a single custom web application.
I led a team to design and build a custom web application to streamline the business processes—all within a firm budget—using Agile methodologies.
The new application met and exceeded the owners' goals, and has enabled a new wave of growth and profitability through new products and services. Five of the previous software tools were completely replaced, and the remaining two are now tightly coupled with the main application through API integrations.
Rainmaker Tweet2Give—Social Giving
Launched Twitter-based financial transaction processing.
Designed as an alternative to "text to give," specifically for social cause marketing and raising awareness for needs, we coordinated a roll-out with a handful of non-profits and celebrities.
52 Deals Flash Sale Platform
Launched and operated a multi-city "flash sale" platform, similar to Groupon.
This platform served email lists of approximately 200,000 addresses, and successfully processed thousands of financial transactions per day.
Real Estate Advertising Website
Created a leading regional real estate advertising website and network (precursor to Zillow and Trulia).
Certifications
Private Pilot
FAA
Skills
Tools
Slack, Sequel Pro, MySQL Performance Tuning, ShipStation, Asana, GitHub, Git, GitLab, Google Slides, Google Docs, Grasshopper, Microsoft Word, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), ETL, QuickBooks Online, Intuit QuickBooks, Navicat, MySQL Workbench, Jira, Board Reporting, Zoom, Confluence, SendGrid, Mailchimp, Trello, Sketch, Scraping Hub, Basecamp, Google Analytics, InVision, Atlassian
Paradigms
Scrum, Agile, Agile Workflow, Agile Product Management, Agile Project Management, Agile Software Development, Kanban, Web Architecture, Marketplace Platforms, Database Schema Design, Rapid Prototyping, Rapid Interactive Prototyping, Iterative Development, Waterfall Development, B2C, Design Thinking, Mobile App Design, Test-driven Development (TDD), Microservices
Platforms
MacOS, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Linux, Shopify, Adobe Suite, Magento, Blockchain, Heroku, Mandrill, Mailgun
Industry Expertise
eBay, Banking & Finance, Logistics, Shipping, Transportation & Shipping, Automotive, Residential Real Estate, Sales & Marketing, Aviation, Digital Agencies, Pets, Food & Beverage, Home Construction, Music, Telecommunications, Toys & Children's Products, Childcare
Other
Rapid Application Development (RAD), Product Development, Consulting, Story Mapping, Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Agile Sprints, UX Design, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), WordPress, Linux, Technology, Technology Trends, Technology Strategy & Architecture, Product Ownership, Product Planning, Product Design, Product Delivery, New Product Development, Product Discovery, Digital Product Design, Software, Small Business, Startups, SQL, User Stories, User Flows, Account Management, Web, PHP, MySQL, Amazon, Amazon Aurora, Linux Servers, Customer Support, Project Support, Lean Product Development, Lean Project Management, Data Architecture, HTML, CSS, Data Engineering, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Web App Development, Business Process Flow Diagrams, Process Flows, User Requirements, Web Design, Web Development, Remote Work, Project Planning, Delivery Management, Project Delivery, Projects, Software Engineering, Solution Design, Solution Architecture, Creative Problem Solving, Stakeholder Engagement, Service, Teamwork, Web Hosting, Business, Databases, Database Table Optimization, Technology Consulting, App Development, Digital Project Management, Product Management, Technical Product Management, Software Project Management, Mobile/Web Project Management, Technical Project Management, eCommerce, eCommerce Management, Data, User Experience (UX), Project Lifecycle, Project Design, Project Analysis, Software Development, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Executive Reporting, Business Planning, Business Analysis, Mode Analytics, User Journey Maps, User Journeys, Product Strategy, Public Speaking, Process Design, Order Management, Customer Service, Customer Success, Product Roadmaps, Product Launch, User Interface (UI), Business Processes, Contract, Virtual Work, Coaching, Freelancing, Requirements, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Models, Product Marketing, Product Frameworks, Innovation, BRD, Software Requirements Specifications (SRS), Product Conceptualization, Cloud, Business Consulting, Product Consultant, eCommerce Platforms, Business Process Automation, Product Development Manager, Websites, Web UX, Web App UX, Web Applications, Estimations, Cost Estimation, Project Estimation, Agile Leadership, Backlog Management, Roadmaps, Feature Roadmaps, Feature Prioritization, Project Management, Scope Management, Project Leadership, Planning, Sprints, Learning, Product Vision, Amazon FBM, Cross-functional Collaboration, Project Coordination, Collaboration, Workflow, Project Timelines, Finance, IT, Software as a Service (SaaS), Product Growth, Management, B2B, Stress Testing, iOS, Amazon EC2, Retail & Wholesale, Small Business Management, Multimedia, Warehouse Operations, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Excel, Accounting, Design, Amazon FBA, Data Analytics, Administration, Backlog Grooming, Market Fit, UI Design, Flowcharts, Documentation, Technical Documentation, Remote Team Leadership, Leadership, Technical Leadership, Prototyping, Wireframing, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Data Visualization, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), JavaScript, APIs, Content Management Systems (CMS), Strategy, Business Strategy, Digital Strategy, Branding, Growth Strategy, Social Media, Performance Testing, Team Leadership, Laravel, Inventory Management, Automation, Sales, Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP), Risk Management, eCommerce Payments, Payment APIs, Payment Processing, Contract Negotiation, Software Architecture, Software QA, Vendor Management, People Management, Strategic Planning & Execution, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Recruiting, User Interviews, Stakeholder Interviews, Hiring, CTO, Budget Management, Budgeting, Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Analysis, Mobile, Mobile UX, Mobile Apps, Mobile UI, Integration, Software Integration, Operations, Implementation, Software Implementation, Full-stack, Photography, Web Scraping, Data Scraping, Sales Management, Email Marketing, Video Streaming, Analytics, Human Resources (HR), Agile Coaching, Financial Reporting, Image Manipulation, Dropbox, Payment Gateways, Technical Program Management, Reporting, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Organizational Leadership, Sprint Planning, Sprint Retrospectives, Machine Learning, Big Data, Technical Hiring, Complex Problem Solving, Data-driven Decision-making, Process Improvement, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Project Reporting, Technical Requirements, Discovery Workshops, Team Management, Offshore Team Management, Online Payments, Business to Business (B2B), Supply Chain, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Continuous Improvement, Mobile Applications, HelpScout, Manufacturing, Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), Cloudflare, Lucidchart, Apparel & Accessories, Fintech, Node.js, Marketing, Video Production, Vue, Single Sign-on (SSO), Python, RESTful Microservices, Digital Advertising, Cryptocurrency, Neo4j, Robotics Product Manager, Music Product Manager, Amazon API, Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS), Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Server Infrastructure, Web Marketing, Drop Shipping, Shipping Management, Distributed Team Management
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