Indy Nelson
Senior Product Manager
Expertise in Product Management
I’m passionate about delivering innovative solutions that disrupt existing markets, provide a world-class user experience, and increase productivity and cost-efficiency. This includes advocating for process improvements, conceptualizing product vision, creating actionable roadmaps, and leading high impact go-to-market strategies for SaaS, iPaaS, AI, and other groundbreaking products. My background covers early-stage tech startups as a founder, product architect, and technical product manager. I am highly adept at leading a cross-functional team of engineers, developers, and UX designers throughout the development product lifecycle. This involves researching user needs, identifying pain points, and creating user stories to guide product design and development. I also have experience collaborating with cross-functional sales, marketing, and finance teams in all product life cycle stages to determine what products to highlight and which features to prioritize.
9+ Years
Managing Projects
7+ Years
Product Experience
5+ Years
Software Development
3+ Years
Scrum Experience
Senior Product Manager
Merkle is a leading data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company that specializes in the delivery of unique, personalized customer experiences across platforms and devices. View Experience
Product Manager, 6 mos
Adobe, a multinational computer software company, has 21K employees worldwide, $11.2B in revenue, and is best known for the Adobe Creative Cloud. View Experience
Product Management Consultant, 1 yr 6 mos
A&B Success contracts with wireless carriers to hire and manage enrollment agents for the California Lifeline Program, handling 7.3% of total subscribers in Q1 2020. View Experience
Product Manager, 2 yrs 7 mos
Odyssey 196 integrated end-to-end product management of a successful seventeen-month world record attempt with the creation of a YouTube channel to document and promote the journey. View Experience
Co-founder and Technical Product Manager, 9 mos
Leverage, an AI startup, offers a lighting retrofit software (SaaS) to the electricians industry, which instantly matches any building’s existing lighting with LED through a proprietary machine-learning algorithm. View Pitch Deck
Software Product Manager, 1 yr
Ledxchange, a tech startup, connects resellers to an online hub of manufactures (B2B) and consumers to an online marketplace (B2C), both intended to streamline adaptation for the LED lighting market. View Business Plan
Founder and CEO, 1 yr 2 mos
LED Alternative Energy, a B2B startup, provides facilities a turn-key solution to retrofit with LED technology.
View Pitch Deck
Product Development
Business Case
Conducted SWOT analysis and competitive analysis of the lighting industry. Evaluated new market opportunities, translated analytical insights into product strategy, and developed a GTM strategy for Led Alternative Energy and a tiered pricing strategy for Ledxchange. Formed a business case and devised a business model canvas for Led Alternative Energy to think big and act small. View Case And Model
Product Roadmap
Identified product requirements by translating customer problems into solutions using VOC. Determined MVP features based on those delivering the most significant benefit to the end-users and wrote the product requirement document to outline Leverage. Worked with engineers to build and maintain the agile product roadmap.
Technical Specifications
Wrote software requirements specification and designed architectural requirements for the machine-learning algorithm, Leverage. Wrote technical documentation for Ledxchange, an e-commerce website. Researched software marketplace to find applications that can handle cross-application synchronization of business data, designed automated workflow triggers through Zapier, and wrote documentation for iPaaS solution integrating SaaS dataflows and apps into a single unified operating system to run A&B Success.
UX Design
Defining Personas
Deeply involved in user research to understand needs, recognize pain points, capture behaviors, and identify tasks for automation and optimization. Analyzed data to construct three user personas for the iPaaS solution. Determined problem scenarios, defined end goals, and aligned user wants and needs into a market requirement document.
Information Architecture
Conducted research on competitors UX, connected business goals to user needs, and collaborated with UX designer to map the user journey across e-commerce site. Led discussions to determine which features go where, defined relationships between pages, and structured, labeled, and organized content into Storyframes. Translated specifications into wireframes for design team to create mockups.
UX Mockup & UI Prototype
Outlined design process and guided designers with prompt contextually framed feedback to create web app mockup for Leverage and e-commerce mockup for Ledxchange. Worked with the team to build the aesthetics and interface of the user’s journey, reduced user touchpoints to a minimum, and led prototype development. View Mockups
Engineering
Agile Development
Translated requirements into a set of prioritized user stories, each defined with testable acceptance criteria, and added to the product backlog. Held sprint planning meeting to determine the backlog tasks to complete during the two-week sprint. Technically savvy to credibly lead technology projects, facilitated engineering trade-off decisions, and held educated discussions with engineers.
Machine Learning
Led the engineering team to build structured tables in a relational database using PostgreSQL. Populated the database with 100,000 light bulb specifications. Worked closely with the engineering team to develop software requirements specifications for the machine-learning algorithm of Leverage. Every time an LED is fed in, the network structure adapts, and its diagnostic ability improves.
Technical Proficiency
Adequate understanding of technical aspects to discuss how a product will be built with engineers. Deepened explicit knowledge of market available tech options by participating in 200+ software demos during research iPaaS solution for A&B Success.
Analytics
Problem-Solving
Performed quantitative analysis on the Lifeline Program to understand performance drivers and presented technical data to non-technical audiences in A&B Success. Evaluated latest FCC order that ends commission payments and requires agents to transition into employees. Interpreted compliance and devised a new financial model, taking into account the dramatic shift from commission to hourly labor costs.
Spreadsheet Modeling
Formulated forecasting model to predict future demand and take into account lead time in setting inventory thresholds for A&B Success. Created an ROI calculator for lighting retrofit projects that were 27% more accurate than industry standard models. Educated in decision analysis for optimization simulation using risk solver platform in Excel.
Business Acumen
Business Functions
Formed California C Corporation, authored corporate bylaws, investigated regulatory compliance, and filed a fictitious business name for LED Alternative Energy. Handled onboarding, reported 29 employees to EDD, and processed payroll through Intuit. Solicited proposals for a worker’s compensation and general liability policy, consulted subject matter experts, developed source selection criteria, conducted proposal evaluation, negotiated terms, and reached an agreement with Guard Insurance. View Documents
Process Improvement
Shepherded assessment to pinpoint value-creating opportunities in existing stack space at the Northern Regional Library Facility, operated by the University of California. Examined 10,920 shelves in the facility’s oldest phase to identify a 23% underutilized shelving density, prevailing from a flawed stack layout. Closing the gap would add 182,654 volumes, thereby reducing expensive on-campus storage, culminating in $621K annual savings. The estimated cost to implement is $65K, a 97% discount when compared to the cost of building new capacity. Curated findings into a needs assessment and recommended strategic initiative to the University Librarian. View Proposal
Risk Management
Identified risk factors, classified type and severity, instigated substitutes, and determined threat parameters while traveling worldwide. Actively monitored geopolitical conflicts to interpret the level of unrest and devise security protocols to mitigate risk exposure. Risks linked with high-level objectives, such as visa processing, were ranked by probability, prioritized based on impact, accepted within control thresholds, and ascribed a contingent response strategy. Learn More
Strategic Planning
Defined high-level objectives needed to achieve the vision of breaking the world record as the youngest person to visit all sovereign countries in record time. Established entry criteria consisting of clearing passport control, when applicable, and having a photo taken in the country. To ensure greater success levels, KPIs were used to measure and guide progress on cost variance, schedule variance, country visited milestones, arranged visas, and monitoring overall progress. Learn More
Communication
Public Speaking
Demonstrated aptitude at content and delivery, considering audience expectations and needs as an award-winning speaker. Nationally recognized as a BSA Speakers Bank Award recipient, delivering 20+ motivational speeches across all program levels. Advocated on shifting the debate to air quality as a keynote speaker at the AREDAY summit in Aspen. Engaged leaders at entrepreneurship speaker series at Berkeley-Haas. Won second place in founder.org pitch competition and semi-finalist of UCB startup competition.
Strategic Partnership
Cultivated authentic relationships with partners across multiple verticals. Nurtured engagement through inspiring language and evoking excitement from shared passions. Grew rapport into that of colleagues, reinforced by taking ownership of LED Alternative Energy’s business as a house account with Luxel Technology, bypassing two layers of the distribution channel, and instantly reducing COGS by 31%. At the same time, formalized an MoU with Omega Pacific, a full-service electrical distributor, to ease conflict from intermediaries, access channels for auxiliary product, and leverage brand assets to establish reputable standing with target customers. View Datasheet
Leadership
Cross-Functional Teams
Formed teams in a highly collaborative environment and fostered relationships across organization to manage complex projects. Guided engineering/design/business teams in software development and am skilled at handling multiple work streams at once while hitting tight deadlines. Adept at aligning stakeholders both with hierarchical authority (Ledxchange) and without hierarchical authority (A&B Success).
Managing Projects
Proven track-record of owning and delivering nine projects, from needs assessment to accepted deliverable. Defined scope, gathered requirements, formulated project plans, and established schedules. Built relationships, influenced partners, allocated resources, and managed teams. Held meetings with each project sponsor to discuss progress, updates, and deliver the final report. Learn More