Randy Stewart
(206) 629-8743
Seattle, WA
ABOUT ME
Since 1995, my passion has been conceptualizing and creating compelling consumer Internet products & services. These products have run the gamut from personals, online retail, community building to communications.
EXPERIENCE
2009 - Present
Seattle, WA
Product Manager
- Relaunched iOS & Android applications to rave user reviews and increased usage.
- Led migration of Cheezburger Network Sites from Wordpress to a native platform.
- Integrated Facebook registration into Cheezburger accounts.
- Built and managed virtual goods program.
- Incorporated game mechanics into site activities to onboard and promote desired activities.
- Responsible for planning, prioritizing and implementing new features, bug fixes and user interface.
- Worked with distributed development teams and managed outside agency work.
- Created the user experience design for most projects.
- Managed project work utilizing Agile & Lean methodologies.
2007 - 2009
San Francisco, CA
VP of Product
- Drove product requirements and marketing strategy to grow Boxbe’s member base.
- Designed viral mechanisms into core product to increase Boxbe's growth.
- Led multivariate testing efforts to assess and iterate copy/UI of website.
- Led expansion of Boxbe into Gmail, Google Apps and AOL Mail.
CFO
- Responsible for planning, creation and execution of financial plan.
- Doubled company financial runway through a mixture of HR and operational cost reductions.
- Coordinated HR functions, payroll, taxes.
Senior Product Manager
- Led relaunch of Boxbe including new design, features, and workflows.
- Refocused product on protecting existing email addresses, resulting in big increase in growth.
- Coordinated and crafted messaging language.
- Deployed, wrote Wordpress based blog.
- Managed Boxbe social media presence, monitoring and response.
2005 - 2007
Stewtopia
Seattle, WA
Social Media Strategist
- Provided consulting services for growing internet companies.
- Developed engagement and retention system recommendations for social media sites.
- Created strategic social media and relationship marketing plans.
- Clients included Wetpaint, Boxbe, and other early stage Web 2.0 internet companies.
2004 - 2005
Brisbane, CA
Product Manager - Epinions
- Responsible for planning, prioritizing and implementing new features, bug fixes and user interface.
- Responsible for increasing quantity and quality of product reviews.
- Responsible for growing bottom line revenue.
- Wrote and implemented new business plan for Epinions.
- Wrote product requirements documents for business plan.
- Launched RSS feeds of reviews.
- Launched Epinions message boards to facilitate intra-community communication.
- Integrated Shopping.com search into Epinions to increase accuracy and reduce duplicative engineering.
- Planned quarterly member chats and bi-coastal meet-ups to promote member contribution.
- Created and enforced policies regarding site usage.
- Created year end gift program for most prolific members.
- Implemented Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for internal and external tools.
- Streamlined numerous intensely manual processes.
1999 - 2001
Sunnyvale, CA
Product Manager, Computers and Electronics Shopping
- Responsible for features, functionality and merchandising of site.
- Coordinated business development, engineering, sales, marketing and graphic designers to build, deploy and maintain product.
- Created central hub for product specs, marketing text, reviews and sales.
- Maintained relationships with numerous content providers and merchants.
- Directed engineering to create data aggregation tools for computers and electronics data pages.
- Efforts led to creation of standard data format for all Yahoo! Shopping product categories.
- Hired and trained data aggregation team to collect and clean data from data providers and manufacturers.
- Created data driven product merchandising efforts to increase overall sales
- Helped acquire and integrate a small company (VivaSmart) to build out computers, electronics and video games product data pages.
- Worked with data team to collect page view, sales and user tracking stats.
- Improved product quality by monitoring usage and feedback.
- Used collected data to help merchandising teams create ads.
- Tools created by team used by all of Yahoo! Shopping.
1996 - 1999
Yahoo!
Sunnyvale, CA
Lead Surfer - Computers and Internet
- Created and maintained ontology and web site additions of Computers and Internet categories of the Yahoo! directory.
- Developed a deep database of computer reviews and product information for use in Yahoo's Computer Buying guide.
- Hired and managed intern to aid in computer review and product information collection.
- Created and maintained ontologies for many Yahoo! Properties, including Yellow Pages, Groups, Locals, International Properties, Chat
- Documented ontology philosophy and rules.
- Managed category reorganizations.
1996 - 1998
Yahoo!
Sunnyvale, CA
Lead Surfer - Surfer Training
- Trained all incoming Yahoo! Surfers (~60 people).
- Led creation of surfer training program.
- Reviewed and refined surfer training with each iteration of new surfers.
- Cross-trained other departments (Product, Engineering) in editorial philosophies and rationales.
- Created training guide used worldwide to train new Yahoo! Surfers.
- Worked with surfing specialists to document all subjects in the Yahoo! Directory.
- Coordinated collection of surfing guidelines into a cohesive guide used by worldwide surfing teams.
- Assisted IT department in transitioning Surfing team from Linux to Windows NT.
1996
Yahoo!
Sunnyvale, CA
Surfer
- Categorized web sites.
- Created ontology for web sites.
Summer 1995
Match.com
San Francisco, CA
Marketing Intern
- Created email and newsgroup marketing campaign that targeted professional women.
- Maintained computer networks and supported marketing team's laptops.
8/1994 - 5/1995
Telecommunications Department - Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH
Teaching Assistant
- Assisted in creating curriculum and teaching Internet, WWW university class.
- Assisted in editing the academic version of The Whole Internet by Ed Krol.
SKILLS, TECHNOLOGIES & PROJECTS
- Product Management - Agile, Lean & Waterfall Methodologies
- Social Media - Blogging, Social Networks, Podcasts, Video, Twitter
- Internet Technologies - XHTML, CSS, PHP, RSS, Wordpress.
- Multivariate testing
- Applications - Adobe Photoshop, OmniGraffle, TextMate, Microsoft Office, Lightroom, Keynote
- Operating Systems - Fluent with MacOS X and Windows
EDUCATION & INTERESTS
- Bowling Green State University
- Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with emphasis in International Business
- Minor in Telecommunications
- Chief Technical Officer for Undergraduate Student Government - led efforts to get $10 million grant to upgrade campus computing facilities.
References available upon request.
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