About Product Pollution

Actionable Insights for Aspiring Entrepreneurs and Product Managers

Are you building products or creating more trash? If you don’t want to create more product pollution, stick around and learn from my mistakes, my successes, lessons from the industry, and more.

Product Pollution explores concepts in product management, technology, and entrepreneurship. These things go hand-in-hand, and they should be explored together. I’ve built a career out of taking the winding path to destinations, and those winding paths have given me a unique perspective on things like product management, starting companies, and scaling.

Why Should You Care?

The online world can be a lonely place to build a career. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or PM, Product Pollution will provide actionable insights, deep learnings extracted from years of my own experiences working on tech companies of various sizes. You’ll get exclusive interviews from other people who have been exactly where you and have gone exactly where you want to go.

I will write a new article every week. Once a month, I’ll write a free article. None of my writing will be fluff. It will all include deep insights and tips to help you start your next company, grow as a PM, navigate the world of corporate tech, bootstrap a business, and more.

Papers, Please

You want references? I get it. Who is this guy?

I am Lead Product Manager for ClickUp, building Docs. Previously, I was the first hire at Pinata and helped grow the company from $0 in revenue to $7 million. Before leaving, I rose to Head of Product. Prior to Pinata, I founded a company called SimpleID. This was a product-led company focused on improving communication with customers in the nascent blockchain application space. Prior to that, I founded a company called Graphite Docs. This was a product built as a privacy-focused alternative to Google Docs with a target market of larger enterprises and those in need of greater protections.

I did a bunch of things that shaped me as a product person, founder, and employee along the way. I worked at an EdTech startup focused on digital media portfolios. I worked on the Geico.com team, focused on customer experience and user experience. I managed teams in call centers. I worked at a grocery store. I started a sports blogging company that was eventually acquired by a fantasy sports site. Back in the early 2000s, I started an e-commerce company with my friends from high school before e-commerce was cool.

And through it all, I have written.

I’ve written fiction and technical tutorials. I’ve written marketing copy and opinions. I’ve written on Blogger and WordPress and Medium and Ghost. I self-hosted and paid. And today, I’m writing about product and tech on Substack.

I do this all while trying to be the best husband and father I can be. I do it with the intent of being at every basketball game my oldest has. I do it while making sure I have the time to coach my youngest’s baseball team. And I do it while making sure my wife and I have time for ourselves.

If I can do it, so can you.

Ok, What’s This Mind Pollution Stuff

Back in 1991, an episode of Captain Planet called “Mind Pollution” aired. The team was not tasked with battling environmental pollution. Instead, they had to fight mind pollution. The United States had just come off a rough decade. The 80s saw drugs spread across the country. The crack epidemic, as it has come to be known, was on everyone’s minds. Parents and educators and politicians were scrambling for solutions. So, along came Captain Planet to save the day.

The truth is, the fear of “mind pollution” is not very different from the fear of misinformation spread on social media today. But I always found the idea that minds could be polluted interesting. What if that pollution was used to shape perspectives in a more interesting way?

When I started writing fiction, I quickly realized that when a reader consumes writing, the author becomes a small polluter of that reader’s mind. The author clouds the person’s mind with something new. Creates a world on top of reality. This was a fascinating analogy for me, and I latched on to it.

And now, I’m extending that thought process to my writing about product. Unlike the idea of fiction polluting minds in a way that expands those minds, Product Pollution is the creation of bad products. Let’s try to avoid that, shall we?

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