Ryan James, Product Manager in Las Vegas, NV, United States
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Ryan James

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Location
Las Vegas, NV, United States
Toptal Member Since
June 29, 2020

Ryan is a relentless, savvy, and gritty product leader with eight years of product experience in various companies, including Tesla. He's a driven senior product manager ready to roll up his sleeves to get the job done. Ryan is the type who can thrive in a hectic environment and is passionate about creating simplified solutions to complex problems—ultimately delivering a more exceptional customer experience.

Project Highlights

Supply Chain Platform for the Cannabis Industry
Took an MVP through launch and build out that improved the B2B supply chain ecosystem in the cannabis industry.
Digital Voting Software
Led a team to facilitate a new software that supports all aspects of a digital election process.
Cannabis eCommerce Platform
Increased revenue by 40% from monetizing brand promotional campaigns.

Expertise

Work Experience

Director of Product, Digital Customer Experience

2022 - 2024
SunPower
  • Worked with executive leadership to build a roadmap to deliver an updated customer experience that would increase customer engagement and communication by 100%.
  • Shipped a new feature that streamlined operations and increased the user experience, which led to a $3 million cost savings for the business.
  • Led revamping the end-to-end customer experience to reduce friction and increase customer sentiment.

Head of Product

2022 - 2024
Eterneva
  • Launched a no-code/low-code digital product to expand the customer experience and journey when purchasing a diamond.
  • Increased the ability to scale sell-through fivefold without increasing cost or human capital expenses.
  • Drove significant efficiencies within the business so that the delivery of digital services would be more impactful for the customer.

Head of Product

2022 - 2023
HIVE Diversity
  • Led the creation of the product roadmap to execute against the founder's vision.
  • Collaborated with the founder to create a strategy for rebranding and rebuilding the platform.
  • Delivered a new user experience that created a simple onboarding experience for more users to apply for more jobs.

Head of Digital Product

2021 - 2022
Pistil Data
  • Developed a product strategy that aligned with the business goals for the company to position itself for another round of funding.
  • Managed a team of five and helped scale the engineering department with onshore and offshore developers.
  • Executed the developed product strategy, leading the company to have the highest quarterly revenue. It was 100% higher than the previous highest quarterly revenue.

Director of Digital Product Growth

2020 - 2021
Treez
  • Developed the growth product strategy for the company to expand into more markets across the US. The plan consisted of a roadmap that outlined product gaps to be addressed to unlock new markets.
  • Gathered all requirements and defined the workflows that made sense for the user with the platform.
  • Translated complicated business problems for a heavily regulated and turbulent industry into easy-to-understand solutions and functional requirements.

Principal Product Manager

2020 - 2020
Smartmatic
  • Oversaw the certification process for two software platforms to digitize the voting process in the state of California and Los Angeles County.
  • Developed the product strategy for an election platform that worked on a database of over 30,000 voting machines.
  • Directly led a team of ten including six software engineers, three QA members, and one UX/UI designer.

Director of Digital Product

2019 - 2020
Wayv
  • Built a B2B supply chain ecosystem platform for the cannabis industry consisting of web-and-mobile applications.
  • Increased marketplace adoption by 50% through digitizing sales tools.
  • Headed a 25-person overseas engineering team, two UX designers, and one product manager.
  • Constructed the product roadmap to drive up the California market share by 10% over six months.
  • Incorporated a product strategy consisting of a B2B framework with a B2C feel to provide a familiar customer experience.
  • Built a B2B eCommerce site that was our primary source of revenue and added brand promotional campaigns, increasing revenue by 40%.

Lead Product Manager

2017 - 2018
Gold Is A Better Way
  • Delivered a project in 12 months from concept to launch, including goldisabetterway.com and the USA Today bestseller called "Gold Is A Better Way: And Other Wealth Secrets Wall Street Want You To Know."
  • Boosted the average dollar amount closed from $10,000 to $17,000 by creating key metric tracking that gave brokers greater insight into each customer, leading to a more straightforward sales call.
  • Achieved a 15% growth in the number of closed deals per month by optimizing the customer experience.
  • Managed freelancers, including two engineers, two designers, and a five-person marketing team.

Technical Product Manager

2012 - 2018
Tesla
  • Shipped internal web-and-mobile applications with revamped user experiences that increased efficiency by 100%.
  • Spearheaded a training program for the design engineering department that propelled job compliance from 15% to 97% in less than six months.
  • Created a more streamlined design platform through data analysis to validate features for the product development process.
  • Established a simplified a web application which increased overall job throughput.

Supply Chain Platform for the Cannabis Industry

Took an MVP through launch and build out that improved the B2B supply chain ecosystem in the cannabis industry.

WAYV's mission was to streamline the B2B supply chain in cannabis. I was the third employee hired at the company and was tasked with taking the MVP and building it in a way that digitized the entire workflow of the B2B supply chain. I was able to execute on creating a new efficient process for distribution centers, brands, and retailers to move products. This was supported by an open web marketplace and an ERP/WMS web platform accompanied by a mobile app that allowed ease of use for all workers in the supply chain.

Gold is a Better Way

http://goldisabetterway.com

Built the CMS platform, website, and book that changed the way investors considered precious metals as an investment which cut down the sales cycle and increased the number of deals closed per month and dollar per closed deal.

Gold is a Better Way was a concept of the CEO at Advantage Gold. He had a vision of curating a web experience to their niche market of baby boomers while making it easier for his brokers to close deals.

I was involved from concept to launch over an 18-month period. By talking with numerous investors and trying to sell precious metals, I could gather an expert-level opinion on how disconnected the market was for this investment class. This web platform gives an education-first approach to any potential investor. It points out only the most important aspects that would allow any investor to decide on whether precious metals are for your portfolio or not.

One of the best parts was our ability to connect our users' interaction to our sales pipeline. We tailor notifications to the brokers so they know the optimal time to call a potential client and what they had been interested in on the website. I also helped the CEO with his book's design and typesetting that became a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Digital Voting Software

Led a team to facilitate a new software that supports all aspects of a digital election process.

Smartmatic is building a digital election product for the County of Los Angeles in the state of California. As the principal product manager, I was a high-level contributor to the product strategy as well as leading the engineering, design, and QA teams on the project.

Cannabis eCommerce Platform

Increased revenue by 40% from monetizing brand promotional campaigns.

The eCommerce site is what generated all of our traffic and revenue. In an effort to grow the business, I did some discovery and experimentation with our users. My findings and validation revealed our retail and brand users wanted to have more promotional options to sell more inventory.

Once validated, I worked on defining a promotional/discount module. We started to offer additional services for web banner creation and offing a marketing add-on to take advantage of the promotions campaign manager. Pricing for these services was unique because it was the cannabis industry, and most of the brands we worked with were mid-market brands.

Since most low-end web design is around $2,500, we offered marketing packages between $2,500-$10,000. A $10,000 package was for a 3-month term of campaigns with unlimited asset creation.

These promotional campaigns led to a new revenue stream in asset creation and increased sales revenue through the eCommerce marketplace. The underlining element was not to collect more data on what type of promotions are being run, most effective, and sales on which product sold through the quickest once the promotion was added.
2006 - 2010

Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Entrepreneurship

Chapman University - Orange, CA, United States

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