Stephen Conn, Product Manager in San Francisco, CA, United States
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Stephen Conn

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Bio

Stephen is a physician and versatile product manager with extensive startup experience as a founder and software developer. He has expertise in eCommerce, API products, B2B SaaS products, logistics and shipping, and biotech/health technology. Previously he’s worked for venture-backed startups (funded by Union Square Ventures, Bessemer Ventures, Plug and Play), and he recently completed his MD degree at Dartmouth. Stephen enjoys helping founders solve tough analytical problems.

Project Highlights

Leading an Enterprise eCommerce Partner Launch
Led development and operations for launching a mission-critical product for one of the largest eCommerce brands in the world.
Leading Metrics-driven Core Product Redesign
Led a team in creating an empirical approach to future product development and used that approach to redesign a core product.

Expertise

Work Experience

Senior Product Manager

2016 - 2018
Shippo
  • Grew the users of Shippo’s core product by 76% year over year.
  • Established a product management process across teams and product areas.
  • Led the complete redesign of core product.
  • Developed and implemented the measurement of metrics and KPIs for each product area.
  • Conducted detailed user interviews and created in-app user feedback loops.

CEO | Founder

2014 - 2016
bohoclo, Inc.
  • Bootstrapped an eCommerce startup with funding from 500 Startups and VTF Capital.
  • Grew a subscription eCommerce business to over 2,000 subscribers and more than $500,000 ARR (accounting rate of return).
  • Built and managed a team of five including the shipping and logistics, social media marketing, and customer experience.
  • Designed and developed an internal admin tool for the management of customer profiles and subscription data.
  • Planned and implemented digital ad campaigns to drive product growth and deliver LTV:CAC ratios >10.

Technical Product Consultant

2012 - 2014
Artify.It and Gyde.ly
  • Implemented metrics measurement best practices for the evaluation of early-stage product and to inform product development.
  • Prioritized feature changes based on customer feedback and metrics.
  • Researched and designed product prototypes and worked with business stakeholders to develop product roadmaps.
  • Improved the website performance to allow for more Agile product development practices.
  • Investigated competitive business models and market share and size.

Back-end Software Developer

2012 - 2012
Groupon
  • Interfaced with external teams to define architectural requirements for the payments product API.
  • Prototyped a technology product (iOS) to be launched within the Groupon Payments ecosystem.
  • Provided product leadership in conceptualizing applications of leading-edge mobile technology including new Bluetooth protocols.

Co-founder

2010 - 2012
tapviva, Inc.
  • Designed and developed mobile ordering and payments apps and merchant-facing order management tools for quick-service hospitality.
  • Acquired large customers (e.g., Philz Coffee) and scaled to thousands of daily orders.
  • Raised venture funding from a prestigious startup incubator (AngelPad).

Leading an Enterprise eCommerce Partner Launch

Led development and operations for launching a mission-critical product for one of the largest eCommerce brands in the world.

While at Shippo, I was lucky to work with some of the largest eCommerce brands in the world. Here, I led the development and launch of a custom shipping solution for a large eCommerce customer. The commercial and product implementations were complex and high-risk for both parties and involved several challenging deadlines that could not be moved. Staged rollouts and other common methods of derisking a product launch were not possible as they are typically so we had to work extremely closely with engineering departments both internally and with the customer to be fully prepared for loads of product and server usage at the deadlines.

Additionally, we had to make subtle and challenging product development decisions during protracted negotiations with the customer, exposing the delicate balance of being customer-centric in your approach to developing product and ensuring that your product development is extensible and strategically leverageable for other customers and across verticals.

Development and Launch of eCommerce MVP

Developed and launched an MVP in the apparel eCommerce space.

At the start of founding my second company, I developed and launched an MVP using best practices from Lean product development, including demand testing (using landing pages and smoke tests), testing marketing channels to developing models for CAC and LTV, and soliciting feedback from early users to inform product development. I also optimized ad and marketing campaigns across Facebook, AdWords, Reddit, and direct email.

This project led to significant traction (both revenue and subscribers) which led to seed funding from Vegas Tech Fund and 500 startups.

Leading Metrics-driven Core Product Redesign

Led a team in creating an empirical approach to future product development and used that approach to redesign a core product.

In this project, I pioneered—using metrics and measurement—to guide product development and an early-stage, venture-backed startup. The previous product development had been informed by qualitative conversations with customers and some aggregate data from the customer service team but had lacked in-product measurement of core metrics of the product's success.

I developed a plan for defining these core metrics and then implementing them using client- and server-side tools. I then used this data to develop hypotheses about how the product could be improved and led the design team in developing redesigned UI and UX flows to test these hypotheses following a lean software development process.

Over the course of six months, these product-development cycles resulted in significant improvements in the core product metrics which was reflected in improved customer feedback (e.g., NPS scores) and improved product engagement.
2018 - 2022

Doctorate Degree in Medicine

Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth - Hanover, NH, USA

2003 - 2007

Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Mathematics

Pomona College - Claremont, CA, USA

Tools

Trello Development, GitHub, Jira, Slack Development

Paradigms

Agile Product Management, Agile Product Management, Agile Product Management, UX Development, Waterfall Project Management

Platforms

Mixpanel

Industry Expertise

Logistics Consulting, Shipping

Other

Lean Product Development, Lean Startups, Product Ownership, Product Management, Business Analysis Consulting, Requirements, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Modeling, Product Design, Product Development, Product Frameworks, Innovation, Product Discovery, Product Delivery, BRD, Software Requirements Specifications (SRS), SaaS Product Management, SaaS Product Management, Lean Delivery, E-commerce marketing, eCommerce Payments, Product Evangelism, Mobile UX Design, Excel Development, Data Science Product Management, SaaS Product Management, APIs, Enterprise SaaS, Apparel & Accessories, Fundraising, International Payments, iOS, Google Apps

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