Taylor Mahony
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Bend, OR, United States
Toptal member since July 13, 2021
Taylor is a proven product management professional with experience building and leading teams that drive product vision from inception to launch and beyond. His strengths include great customer experience intuition, full-stack technical expertise and experience, and the versatility, determination, and enthusiasm to get the job done. Taylor has achieved great success across the product organization of a Fortune 500 company and launched several successful startups.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Chief Product Officer (CPO)
- Feature Roadmaps
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- Product Management
- Product Roadmaps
- Prototyping
- React Native
- Test-driven Development (TDD)
Work Experience
Founder, CTO
Geocaster
- Designed and developed Geocaster, a mobile app that lets users create and discover audio and video "geocasts" tied to real-world locations, integrating React Native, Google Maps API, and geofencing for an immersive user experience.
- Built deep linking functionality to enable users to share geocasts via custom links, directing non-app users to a Webflow-powered preview and App Store download, improving content visibility and user conversion.
- Developed a Supabase-powered back end with an intuitive drag-and-drop playlist builder, allowing creators to upload, manage, and organize geocasts with custom metadata for seamless playback and content discovery.
- Integrated AI-assisted content tagging that helped creators auto-categorize geocasts, improving searchability and discovery and making it easier for users to find relevant location-based experiences.
- Built a scalable system allowing users to record, upload, and share geocasts, fostering a creator ecosystem where educators, historians, and tour guides can publish engaging location-based media.
- Designed a Mount Bachelor scavenger hunt geocast, combining GPS-triggered clues and multimedia storytelling to engage outdoor enthusiasts, showcasing Geocaster’s potential for tourism, education, and gamified exploration.
- Structured Geocaster as a scalable platform, incorporating business and legal frameworks to support future monetization, including premium content, partnerships, and potential API licensing.
Head of Product
Build'r Inc.
- Rebooted product strategy and led the reboot of the Hotcakes app, refining the product vision and scope, which resulted in a clear and actionable roadmap for the marketplace launch.
- Developed a detailed product strategy and roadmap, ensuring alignment with market needs and strategic goals.
- Conducted comprehensive market and user research, validating new product features and gathering essential feedback from influencers and core users.
- Enhanced user experience and collaborated with a designer to develop an aesthetic and user flow that improved overall user satisfaction.
- Launched the MVP for iOS within the planned Q3 timeline, ensuring a smooth and timely market entry.
- Transitioned the development team to Agile methodologies, reducing development time by 25% and enhancing project efficiency.
- Oversaw the integration of eCommerce platforms through APIs, enabling seamless transactions and enhancing the app's functionality.
- Exercised collaborative autonomy in decision-making, balancing independent progress with founder input to ensure strategic alignment and budget adherence.
- Created compelling pitch materials for potential investors and stakeholders, highlighting the app's value proposition and market potential.
- Provided weekly updates and facilitated effective feature prioritization, ensuring the project stayed on track and aligned with key objectives.
Founder
YesOMS
- Researched, designed, developed, and delivered a white-label native mobile application platform built around smoothing the edges of a customer’s transactional experience for in-person transactions with merchants.
- Drove from innovative concept to prototype to design to MVP.
- Developed and implemented a go-to-market strategy and a testable, scalable guerilla marketing strategy.
- Worked with customers to prioritize and release required features and identify and fix bugs.
- Handled full-stack development using React, React Native (iOS and Android), Redux, Firebase Firestore, and Firebase Cloud Functions.
- Built front-end UX for merchants to design and implement branded native mobile applications for submission to app stores.
Product Development and Monetization Manager
Caraleya.com
- Led the development and launch of Caraleya, a platform designed to promote thoughtfulness and simplify daily tasks.
- Launched the MVP, ensuring it met market needs and user expectations, leading to rapid initial user adoption.
- Developed and executed an innovative monetization strategy.
- Transitioned the team to Agile methodologies, reducing development time by 30% and improving project delivery timelines.
- Developed and maintained a comprehensive product roadmap, ensuring alignment with strategic goals and timely delivery of key features.
- Provided strategic advisory support to the founder, helping to shape the vision and direction of Caraleya, ensuring alignment with long-term business objectives.
Product Manager | Consumer Apps
Crate.co
- Spearheaded product development and guided the Crate platform from concept to implementation, collaborating with cross-functional teams and ensuring strategic alignment, which contributed to securing $5 million in pre-seed funding.
- Led AI integration and integrated advanced AI features into Crate, including AI-generated summaries and personalized content recommendations, enhancing user engagement and content organization efficiency.
- Improved user experience and designed and refined the UI/UX for Crate, resulting in a 30% increase in user satisfaction and a 25% boost in user retention rates.
- Conducted extensive market research and user analysis, identifying key trends and user needs, which informed product development and innovation strategies.
- Implemented agile practices and transitioned the development team to Agile methodologies, resulting in a 35% reduction in development time and improved project delivery timelines.
- Negotiated and secured strategic partnerships with industry leaders, expanding Crate's market reach and enhancing the platform's capabilities through integrated solutions.
Senior Product Manager
Xoom, a PayPal Service
- Added product value through various stages of startup growth, from a scrappy startup through explosive growth strategies, large investment rounds, external company acquisition and onboarding, initial public offering, and acquisition by PayPal, Inc.
- Re-built the product management team and project management process into a cohesive infrastructure equipped for scale.
- Increased the speed of partner integrations fivefold to 56 new partners annually in 25 new countries and across three product lines by productizing the integrations department and improving the launch of front-end user interfaces.
- Enabled rapid scalability into new markets by completely reimagining an ineffective communications platform and transforming it into a comprehensive product that combines email, SMS, and push notifications and supports 15+ languages.
- Ensured access to a 20-fold increase in the total available market (TAM) by architecting a microservice-based infrastructure that could support the company's principal product offering internationally and at a dramatically increased scale.
- Transformed the Refer-A-Friend incentive program from a poorly performing acquisition channel to the most effective new user acquisition driver, achieving a tenfold increase in new users and a 95% decrease in fraud rates.
Product Manager | Director, Technical and Content Care | Acting CTO
Animation Mentor
- Built and led the software development and technical support teams that transformed an online education startup into the preeminent animation school and recipient of multiple awards.
- Optimized the learning experience as head of program and content management, team building, Agile coaching and implementation, and training.
- Rebuilt the core product experience into a fully scalable infrastructure with impressive technical innovations, including recent precursors to teleconferencing applications in use today.
- Improved collaboration, commitment, morale, and optimism in a fledgling, rapid-growth startup environment by leveraging Agile methodologies to build and align teams.
- Drove the creation and maintenance of a comprehensive and accurate content management system able to scale approximately 10x.
- Acted as CTO and learned not to build technical products using Waterfall methodologies. I hired a replacement CTO with Agile experience and went on to focus on product management instead.
Project History
White Label Payments Mobile App
YesOMS offers a turn-key platform for brands looking to compete in today's app-based market. It consists of a branded mobile app for patrons, order management for merchants, and brand dashboards and content management for brand owners or managers.
In their app, there is a payment system that augments their existing point of sale (POS) system and allows customers to skip the line at pick up or order from their table. It also enables merchants to optimize operations by automating mundane tasks, such as dealing with payments, keying in orders, or tracking down customers when orders are ready.
It is COVID-19 safe, as there is no physical contact with anyone else's device. It also allows merchants to bundle their apps into a single branded app (think food truck parks or venues) and then brand that experience as well.
Visit the YesOMS website at www.yesoms.com or download the app by searching "YesOMS" in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.
Truckd
Built the platform, developed and validated the UX, designed the UI, created the prototypes, sought customer feedback, built the network infrastructure, wrote the code, conducted beta tests, validated the MVP, and brought the product to market.
With Truckd, merchants can create their own branded mobile app experience. It is an entirely new sort of truck experience, and merchants don't have to do anything but make delicious food.
There is no need for additional staff, no need to enter order details, handle credit cards, notify patrons, or make sure they pick up the correct item. Truckd handles the entire process to save merchants money.
Truckd includes a full payment platform with Apple Pay and Google Pay. Truckd layers over the top of Square, Toast, or any other existing solution, but once merchants have grown used to Truckd, they will wonder why they even need that old POS at all.
Truckd is built on YesOMS, the evolution of point of sale, curating a spectacular patron experience while providing tools for merchants of all sorts. YesOMS gives 3% of its revenue to the Karma Honey Project to support bees and build beehives.
Visit the Truckd website at www.truckd.app.
Nota.fm
Developed using React Native to work out final issues to launch.
Visit Nota at www.nota.fm.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Physics, Music
Middlebury College - Middlebury, Vermont
Skills
Tools
Zoom, Jira, Slack, Illustrator CS6, GitHub, Xcode, Figma, Android Studio, Financial Data
Paradigms
Scrum, Kanban, Agile, Test-driven Development (TDD), Agile Project Management, Agile Product Management, Agile Software Development, B2C, Requirements Analysis, Key Performance Metrics, Rapid Prototyping, Gamification, Mobile App Design, Marketplace Platforms
Industry Expertise
Financial Services, High-tech Startups, Education Technology (Edtech), Marketplaces
Platforms
Firebase, Twilio, Blockchain
Other
Mind Mapping, Agile Coaching, Liberal Arts, Critical Thinking, Product Management, Sprint Retrospectives, Roadmaps, Team Building, Data, Project Management, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Technical Product Management, A/B Testing, Product Growth, Product Discovery, User Stories, Product Strategy, Digital Product Management, Data Analysis, Sprint Planning, Agile Leadership, Web & Mobile Applications, Product Roadmaps, Startups, Fintech, Mentorship & Coaching, Product Operations, Product Leadership, Requirements, Requirements & Specifications, Technical Leadership, Websites, Backlog Management, Mobile Applications, Cross-functional Collaboration, Innovation, Project Planning, Project Reporting, Proof of Concept (POC), Continuous Improvement, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Feasibility Studies, Backlog Grooming, Web Platforms, Web Applications, Leadership, Feature Prioritization, Product Delivery, Platforms, No-code Development, Distributed Team Management, Technical Project Management, Troubleshooting, Technical Support, React Native, Empathy, Marketing, iOS, Analytics, Content, Education Product Manager, Mobile Apps, Lean Startups, Early-stage Startups, Business Processes, Product Ownership, Feature Roadmaps, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Revenue Strategy, APIs, Growth, Mobile App Development, Direct to Consumer (D2C), User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Wireframing, Discovery, eCommerce UX, Reporting, Dashboards, Product Marketing, Discovery Workshops, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Product Planning, Consulting, Pricing Strategy, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Pitch Decks, Monetization Models, User Journeys, New Product Development, Agency, Market Research, User Research, Process Optimization, Workflow, Training, User Interviews, Customer Experience, Business to Business (B2B), Online Payments, Revenue Modeling, Go-to-market Strategy, Data Analytics, Project Scoping, Payment Processing, Stripe Payments, Stakeholder Interviews, Business Analysis, Web Design, Project Budget Management, Project Timelines, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Strategy, Team Management, eCommerce, Google Cloud, Payment Product Manager, Business Requirements, Vendor Selection, Estimations, Streaming, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Business Strategy, OpenAI, SQL, Web 3.0, Low-code Development, React, Node.js, Sales, Design, Cloud Firestore, Payment APIs, Mobile Payments, Apple Pay, Fitness, Development, UX Design, Prototyping, Beta Programs, PayPal, Product Launch, Advertising, Consumer Services, Full-stack Development, Product Engineering, Product Design, Animation, Startup Funding, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Financial Forecasting, 3D, JavaScript, API Integration, Code Review, Android, Mobile, Payment Gateways, Subscriptions, VoIP, Mobile Design, App Development, MVP Design, Ideation, UX Research, Market Fit, Monetization, Technology, Financial Software, Fraud Prevention, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence Product Manager, Chatbots, Profit Optimization, Large Language Models (LLMs), Mobile GPS, Content Design, App UX, Minimum Marketable Product (MMP), Full-stack, FlutterFlow
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