With 10 years of experience, I am an empathetic product manager with a growth mindset, fueled by curiosity and a commitment towards action. I solve the hard things, unlock product value and lead multi-talented teams. I have done this at an early-stage startup, mature startup, and a venture-backed startup of my own.I hit the ground running at 12 years old, working as a caddie. For nearly 9 years, I carried over 750 golf bags. From Jim Skinner, McDonald's CEO, to top lawyers and bankers in Chicago, and even a convicted white collar criminal. These experiences allowed me to gain valuable insights and learned the street smarts of business from deep Midwest roots.I began in a scrappy role as the third employee at a YC backed startup, and helped them scale from pre-seed to series A by solving the cold start problem to their two-sided marketplace. From there, I joined an e-commerce inventory management platform to build their product partnerships channel. I built the channel to over $2M in recurring revenue.In 2019, a close friend shared insights on challenges within the personal lines insurance sales process. I became obsessed with how disjointed and fragmented the process was between agents and consumers. I interviewed over 500 agents and consumers to validate the problem space and then decided to go all-in with him. I was the product-focused founder, I built the first Plaid for insurance, helping insurance agents instantly access client policy information and data. I took the product from zero to one and scaled the business to 250 carrier integrations, 2,500 paying users, and helped over 200,000 consumers with their insurance needs. We raised $3.75M from Silicon Valley investors including Engineering Capital and Hustle Fund.After achieving my goal of taking a startup from zero to one, I took a sabbatical to recharge. During this time, I volunteered weekly, exercised, attended a retreat at a Buddhist monastery, traveled, read, gardened, and enjoyed the simple things in life before my next career move.Now back from sabbatical, I am seeking a product manager role. I aim to work and learn from those who excel in their craft and help the business achieve the outcomes they are looking for. I am comfortable with laying a lot of foundation, executing a vision and navigating in ambiguity.Beyond work, I value time with family and friends, especially golfing, exercising, cooking and desert camping.

Hello, friend. Happy to connect. I'm open to curiosity chats, new opportunities or if I can be helpful in scaling your product and strategy functions.charlesnmichael at gmail dot comYou're also welcome to schedule time on my calendar.

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Building In public

I am currently building in public and exploring challenges related to personal accountability, building/managing close professional relationships, and tracking professional progress. I'm using this as an exercise to build in public, showcase my work, and explore ideas. I will be using this space to document my journey and share updates along the way.

Tuesday, December 26th 2023

I have several paths to work down to reach a point where individuals have a visceral reaction to the problem.It's been about 3 weeks since I launched my survey to evaluate the problems space and challenges around building and managing close professional relationships, tracking career progress, and personal accountability.I received 39 respondents (thank you!) and hosted 10+ calls with potential users to further insights around the problem space. I published my notes and findings from the user research and identified several paths to go down.Shoutout to all the survey respondents, Katherine Wang, Joshua Herzig-Marx, Alex Khadiwala, Rick Valenzi, CFP®, Toby Myers, Nick Anthony, Shane Sweeney, and Lainey Mebust.

Friday, December 8th 2023

After spending some time promoting the survey, we have reached 33 submissions. Nearly double from two days ago. I posted again on LinkedIn, several reddit channels (/ContentCreators, /Micro-SaaS, and /SaaS), and texted several friends.I also received some real validation from another PM who is exploring in the space! This was exciting and encouraging.

After reviewing the initial qualitative data, I started putting together some initial messaging for a fake door landing page. I might have got ahead of myself here, but I had some late night energy to burn off (probably from my 1p latte). It also led me to thinking about ways to further my research and help validate the problem space. More to come on all this soon.

Wednesday, December 6th 2023

I need to find content creators to complete the survey. It’s been 7 days since I posted the survey on LinkedIn & Twitter, Lenny’s newsletter slack channel, product makers slack channel and job search council slack channelI received 17 total responses (thank you!). I’m targeting content creators, founders, full-time freelancers, and employees. 73% of my responses were from employees, and 0% content creators. I need to find content creators to complete the survey. I’m going to spend time over the next week messaging folks on twitter and see how far I get.

Wednesday, November 29 2023

Today I finalized my survey, announced what I was doing, and started sharing the survey to drive submissions.