Back in the driver’s seat

(TLDR: I quit my job and, once again, am taking the leap to go full-time into another startup. Our first “product”: INDUSTRY, a summit for “product people.”)

I’ll get right to it. I’ve decided to take the leap once again and dive full-time into a startup that I co-founded “on the side” just last year with one of my friends. It’s thrilling, exciting, and scary all at the same time. As of Wednesday last week, I become the first full-time employee of Product Collective (the company behind INDUSTRY, the summit we built specifically for “product people”).

I’ll share more about what I’m up to with Product Collective and INDUSTRY. But first… the rest of the story:

JUST FIVE YEARS AGO, I TOOK MY FIRST LEAP

In the Summer of 2011, I took the leap with my friend, Bryan Chaikin, and set out to do something bold, audacious, and to some, crazy: Bring transparency to funeral planning by embracing the internet. Bryan and I co-founded eFuneral as one of the first companies to use the internet to help families get access to otherwise hard-to-find information to help them make more informed funeral decisions. The experience was a great one, but ultimately, we failed. After nearly 3 years, we sold pieces of eFuneral to a large life insurance company that serviced funeral homes, provided the funds to investors, and moved on.

Admittedly, I wasn’t so sure how a place like Cleveland, Ohio would react to a failed startup founder like me. Would investors ever trust me again? Would I even be able to find a job? And what would that job even be? If I wasn’t a founder anymore, what was I? A business development guy? A marketer? Something else?

SOMEBODY TOLD ME I WAS A “PRODUCT PERSON”

At this point, I sure was doing a lot of exploring. But to my surprise, my phone was ringing. People were emailing me. Not just with support (which there was a lot of), but with ideas on what that next path for me should be. Oddly, it seemed like there were even more opportunities for me despite coming off what personally felt like one of my biggest failures. One of those opportunities came from a seemingly unlikely source: a former investor (well… sort of).

I received an email from Erica, somebody who served on the executive team at JumpStart — a Cleveland-based investor of eFuneral. I learned that Erica had actually moved on from JumpStart and was now a part of the management team at Veritix, a ticketing technology company led by one of Cleveland’s superstar entrepreneurs and owned by Dan Gilbert. They were looking for a “product person” to lead new product initiatives. Erica thought I’d be an interesting fit.

Me? A product person? What does that even really mean?

I met with Erica to learn more and, after a series of meetings and interviews, I was offered the role of Director of Product Strategy. I certainly wasn’t deeply ingrained in product management at this stage in my career. Looking back, I was performing this function at eFuneral… sort of. Yet, I had no idea that there was this entire profession built around this function. I accepted the offer, but made it a point to quickly learn. If I were to accept this role, I wanted to really understand what it meant to be a product person.

GIVING FEEDBACK OVER SOME PHO

As I was learning on fly in my new product role, I was also telling the story of eFuneral throughout the community. A part of that story was our ability to raise $1 Million in startup capital (which I later even wrote an entire book on!) One place where I was invited to tell that story was at the Industry Digital Summit, a tech conference in Cleveland organized by Paul McAvinchey. Paul had previously organized TechPint, a series of local meetups for the tech community and had just finished his first day-long conference aimed at the same audience. Paul invited me to speak about our experiences raising startup capital outside of a major tech hub, and I did just that. Soon after the conference, Paul and I met at my favorite Pho restaurant to discuss what the future might look like for it.

Paul was curious how his conference should evolve and wanted my feedback as a speaker. He envisioned the Industry Digital Summit as growing into a national conference, but with Cleveland/Rust Belt character. Paul shared that his conference did it’s job to bring people together, but lacked something that he felt would make things stick in the long term. He was looking for new focus, and specifically wanted to find a way to help bigger companies apply startup methods. I started offering some of my thoughts, focusing on some of the things I was finding as a “new product person.”

1. Product Management has existed for a while, yet it’s something that’s often learned through experiences… not the classroom. Heck, you can’t even major in Product Management in college.
2. Yet, it’s hard to find other product people. This is true especially in a place like Cleveland. But even throughout the Midwest, it’s difficult to find a community of product people helping, encouraging, and empowering other product people.

Then, the “aha moment” happened.

WHAT IF THIS BECAME A ‘PRODUCT’ CONFERENCE?

As lunch concluded, Paul and I parted ways. But it wouldn’t be for long. In fact, I kept thinking about what his conference might look like if it took a totally different turn. What if it was a product conference? A summit for people building, launching, and scaling product. Something that appeals to new product managers just like me, but also one that would help product professionals at larger organizations “think more like a startup.”

I had planned to reach out to Paul to share more thoughts, but he beat me to it. It turned out that he had been thinking about things as well and wanted to meet up again… soon. Before I knew it, we had a new business on our hands. Paul and I decided to spin out the Industry Digital Summit and re-brand it as INDUSTRY, promoting it to an entirely new audience: Product Managers throughout the Midwest. Our plan was to self-fund the first conference (in 2015) “on the side” while we both kept our day jobs. And that’s just what we did.

EARLY MORNINGS, LATE NIGHTS… AND THEN IT HAPPENED.

While Paul and I both maintained our full-time gigs (during this time, I had joined the team at Movable as VP of Product), we started to develop what would become “INDUSTRY.” We started inviting speakers. We started sharing with the rest of the world our vision of a conference built specifically for Product Managers, VP’s of Product, and those in similar roles. While some conferences develop after a media entity builds an audience first, we took the opposite approach. Let’s share with the world what our product (i.e. the conference) would look like first. Then, we can find the right people for it. We literally scoured LinkedIn looking for midwestern product people, would seek out their email address, and would individually invite them one by one. (And yes, we had some help from our friends at SellHack to help find folks, too).

And really, it wasn’t just the two of us. Paul’s wife, Rebecca, stepped in and became a key part of our team helping with a lot of the organizational details that come with planning a conference. Rebecca had played a crucial role in creating the experience and atmosphere that people had come to expect at TechPint. And she sure filled in gaps that Paul and I were leaving with INDUSTRY.

I blinked… and there we were. September 11th, 2015. INDUSTRY 2015 was upon us.

INDUSTRY 2015 & 2016

For those of you that made it to INDUSTRY last year, you already know: it really was something special for product people. Hundreds of product people came from as faraway as China and Ireland. Product teams came together. For a product person, there weren’t many events that were specifically designed for them — especially outside of major tech hubs like Silicon Valley.

After the event took place, Paul, Rebecca and I knew one thing. We had to do this again. Was it a huge financial success? Heck no. Not yet, anyway. But that part didn’t matter. We proved that we could build something that product people thought was valuable, worthwhile, and special. We knew we could find a way to turn that into a business. That would come over time. But to us, the hard part was actually creating something of value, and we felt like we actually accomplished that.

The past 12 months have been a bit of a whirlwind, both for INDUSTRY and elsewhere, for me. I became the President of Movable, and then later helped find an acquirer for the company (who kept me on board as their VP of Product). My wife and I had our 2nd child. And yes, the momentum with INDUSTRY grew.

In fact, as I sit here now, INDUSTRY 2016 is just about one week away. By all accounts, we did most of everything we set out to do this year. We exceeded nearly every one of our goals: More attendees coming from over half of the United States (not just the midwest!), as well as other faraway places like Singapore and Australia. More involvement from national sponsors. An even stronger lineup (with product leaders from Google Ventures, Slack, ESPN, and elsewhere). In short, we stepped up our game. Big time.

THE DECISION

Even though INDUSTRY 2016 hasn’t even happened yet, Paul and I made a big decision. We decided we’re ready to take the next step. We were ready for Product Collective to have its first full-time employee.

Would it be a risk? Heck yes. While this has been a better year for Product Collective as a business, there are certainly no guarantees. There’s no real cushion. But even so, we kept thinking: What could have this year looked like if at least one of us was constantly focusing on it with all of our time and energy?

And so, I raised my hand to become that first full-time person. Paul will still be pouring his heart into it during nights and weekends just as we all have this year… and Rebecca is stepping up and focusing even more of her time on INDUSTRY, even during the day.

Like any startup, there’s a ton of uncertainty. But one thing is for sure: I’ve never felt more sure about whether or not I’m making the right move. The time is now for me. The time is now for us with Product Collective. We know that we can continue to create special experiences for product people, and we can’t wait to see what’s in our future.

DO YOU WANT TO HELP?

Last time I took the leap, some of my friends would ask, “Well… what can I do to help?” I never really had a great answer. This time is different, though.

If you’d love to help us as we take this next step with Product Collective, there’s actually a lot you could do.

1. Let others know about what it is we’re doing! Even with this year’s event being just about a week away, spreading the word helps. Heck, a simple tweet or Facebook post goes a long way.
2. Join us in Cleveland for INDUSTRY 2016! If anything you do involves creating products (particularly technology products), there truly is no better place to be then at Music Box Supper Club next Thursday and Friday. And yes, I know that I’m pretty biased. But thankfully, it looks like we’ll have a pretty full house next week.
3. If you have ideas for folks we should connect with, either as potential speakers, sponsors, or just generally to get feedback from, I’m all ears.

THANK YOU

Seriously, thanks. Thanks for taking the time to read about my next chapter, for your support with INDUSTRY, and if you’re a part of the Cleveland community, for helping me realize post-eFuneral that failing at something doesn’t mean the end. It’s just the beginning of new opportunities.