Justin S.

Product & People Leader – ex. Square, Weebly, Mozilla

Outcome-focused, strategic, and proactive product leader with 15 years of experience managing and growing consumer, developer, B2B, SaaS, and platform/marketplace products and teams. Thoughtful and empathetic people leader who delights in the details and thrives on impacting problems that matter.

Open to fractional product leadership work, including strategy, building/improving product culture, team building and PM growth, lean discovery/delivery, planning process improvements, and more.

Most recently, I managed the products and teams responsible for Square’s eCommerce tools used by hundreds of thousands of restaurants, retailers, and service businesses to seamlessly sell online and in-store.

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Chief Product Officer Strategic Vision FinTech E-Commerce Platforms Web Browsers Product Strategy Advisor Founder

Fractional CPO rates

Work

Launching & Growing Square Online Store

Within 1 year of Square's $365M acquisition of Weebly, I led the complex integration of Weebly's professional website building technology with Square's Point of Sale item catalog and inventory systems to launch the new Square Online Store.

Square Online Store was the pivotal component to unlocking Square's omnichannel vision – empowering brick and mortar Square sellers to begin selling online, and online-only Weebly sellers to begin selling in-person through one cohesive, remarkable solution.

After initial launch, I directly oversaw strategy, roadmaps, execution, and revenue of Square Online's merchant-facing tools and platform. My teams managed all aspects of order fulfillment (delivery/pickup/shipping), item catalog/menu management, store operations, taxes, checkout platform, payment integrations, and international expansion.

Initially launched with a focus on sellers in the Retail SMB industry, we began expanding to target upmarket sellers and serve the needs of Restaurant and Services businesses, going from zero to millions of monthly online orders and billions of dollars in processing volume within a year.

Product Lead Product Launch Go-to-Market Strategy Ecommerce Online Ordering

Scaling online ordering through a pandemic

Just as we began to expand Square Online's target customers beyond Retail shops to Food & Beverage, indoor dining and shopping restrictions took effect across the country in March 2020. Square sellers immediately felt the impact as their revenue was cut off – especially those yet to embrace online ordering.

As the Product Lead for Square Online's merchant-facing tools, I led both our immediate response and action plan, as well as the re-prioritization of our roadmap to respond to rapidly-changing seller needs. Within days of lockdowns beginning, we launched curbside pickup and local delivery functionality, and successfully scaled our platform with the resulting 60x increase in monthly order volume.

To help sellers own their customer relationships and take back their margins, my team launched a new 0→1 product and business in On-Demand Delivery, partnering with DoorDash and Uber to offer seamless courier delivery of millions of online orders for tens of thousands of restaurants.

During this period of intense growth, I drove and sponsored key strategic shifts and active seller growth unlocks by focusing on catalog/menu completeness and frictionless setup, simplified ordering page set up, and establishing principles for store operational excellence.

Chief Product Officer Online Ordering People Management Product Vision Omnichannel strategy

Integrating Weebly into Square's Omnichannel Vision

In 2018, the partner integration and relationship that I and my team built enabling Square merchants to sell online through Weebly led directly to Square's $365M acquisition of the company.

Square's vision was for their 4 million sellers to seamlessly sell both online and in-store through a cohesive omnichannel experience.

Upon joining Square, I led the strategy and multi-year effort across dozens of product and platform teams to turn Weebly into Square's eCommerce platform and champion an omnichannel-first mindset across the organization. This involved leading both short-term and long-term prioritization decisions, roadmap planning, and difficult sunset conversations to integrate Weebly and Square into one cohesive experience for sellers.

This foundational work ultimately led to the launch and growth of numerous new products (e.g. Square Online, Payment Links fka Online Checkout), remarkable omnichannel experiences across the Square ecosystem, and billions of dollars of GPV growth.

Omnichannel strategy Mergers & Acquisitions Integration Strategic Vision Relationship Building

Growing Weebly's B2B Offerings for Designers, Resellers, & Enterprises

As the Principal PM for all of Weebly's partner products, my team worked every day to provide the website, commerce, and marketing tools needed for partners of any size to start and grow their own businesses.

Weebly Cloud enabled resellers and enterprises to co-brand or white label Weebly's easy-to-use website builder as part of their own product offerings – such as a domain registrar offering website bundles, or a large school system giving all teachers their own sites.

I worked closely with our Sales team to refine our target customer and product strategy, understand the needs of those customers firsthand, and quickly ship product enhancements, ultimately growing the business 35% each year.

For website designers, one of Weebly's most passionate customer groups, my team started from first principles to create a new, modern platform for designers to build more advanced sites and manage their clients based entirely on user research and pain points of both current and potential customers. We ultimately launched this new 0→1 product, Weebly for Web Designers, and migrated thousands of designers to sunset our legacy product, removing a tremendous tech debt burden.

These partner products accounted for a combined 10% of Weebly's revenue.

Weebly B2B B2B2C Chief Product Officer Product Management

Launching Weebly's App Center & Developer Platform

As the leading drag-and-drop website builder powering everything from wedding sites to online retailers, Weebly was ready to open up its platform for third-party developers to take its capabilities to the next level.

I launched and managed the Weebly App Center and Developer Platform, including all aspects of product, policy, and operations, as well as designing the app extensibility experiences throughout the product. This included, for example, the brand new home dashboard enabling apps to create custom card components to surface realtime stats, action items, and other key information.

Ultimately, 40+ million Weebly users had access to hundreds of apps to make their businesses more successful.

Weebly Marketplace App Store Optimization Product Management Developer Platform

Leading Firefox Browser Customization at Global Scale

When you think of Mozilla Firefox, there's a good chance you think of its deep customization capabilities and powerful third-party add-on ecosystem.

From 2009-2013, as Firefox grew to 30% worldwide market share, I led the Firefox Add-ons team and ecosystem – launching new marketplace experiences for users to discover their favorite add-ons, ensuring the security and quality of the add-on submission process, supporting and growing our passionate open source community, and lowering barriers to extension development through improved developer tools and resources.

As a result, 400 million Firefox users downloaded more than 3 billion add-ons in dozens of languages, all possible through the experiences I and my team loved creating.

Firefox Marketplace Developer Platform Product Management People Management

Experience

Jun 2018 — Oct 2022

Square

Head of Product, eCommerce Platform

Led Square's post-acquisition integration of Weebly into the new Square Online Store, and managed the products and teams responsible for the eCommerce tools used by hundreds of thousands of restaurants, retailers, and service businesses to seamlessly sell online and in-store.

Launched Square Online Store, leading the complex integration of Weebly’s website builder with Square’s POS item catalog and inventory systems within 1 year of acquisition close, growing from 0 to millions of monthly orders and billions of GPV in 1 year.
Led the vision and multi-year effort across dozens of teams (involving hundreds of engineers, designers, PMs) to deliver a true omnichannel-first experience, unifying online and in-person functionality across the SQ Ecosystem into a cohesive experience.
Directly oversaw strategy, roadmaps, execution, and revenue of Square Online's merchant-facing tools and platform, including all aspects of order fulfillment (delivery/pickup/shipping) and item catalog/menu management as we moved upmarket.
Recruited, managed, developed, and retained a high-performing team of 15+ product managers, program managers, and people leads. Member of Square’s Product Hiring Bar, a small group of senior product leaders who review and calibrate every PM hire.
Led Square Online’s response to rapidly changing COVID-19 seller needs — launching curbside pickup and local delivery in a matter of days, and successfully scaling our platform with the resulting 60x increase in monthly order volume.
Responsible for the 0→1 product launch and revenue growth of On-demand Delivery, partnering with DoorDash and Uber to offer seamless courier delivery of millions of online orders for tens of thousands of restaurants.
Drove key strategic shifts and active seller growth unlocks by focusing on catalog completeness and frictionless setup, simplified ordering pages, serving our key verticals more thoroughly, and establishing principles for store operational excellence.
Directed the eCommerce division’s Annual Strategic Planning effort and program management function, securing funding and driving alignment and clarity across the company on the most complex and impactful initiatives.

Jul 2015 — Jun 2018

Weebly

Principal Product Manager

Launched and grew the most technically complex partner products and integrations at Weebly, including its developer platform, app marketplace, B2B offering, and eCommerce integrations.

Launched and managed the Weebly App Center and Developer Platform, including product management, policy, and operations, giving 40+ million Weebly users access to hundreds of apps to make their businesses more successful.
Led product for Weebly's B2B reseller and enterprise platform, Weebly Cloud — accounting for over 10% of revenue.
Developed product strategy for new partner-focused eCommerce initiatives using lean discovery methods, including an integration with Square that directly led to its $365M acquisition of Weebly.

Mar 2014 — Jul 2015

Nextbib

Founder

Founded and built NextBib, a website that helped thousands of runners find their next race by providing interactive course maps, photos, reviews from past participants, and detailed information about nearby races.

Designed all product pages and features by employing lean startup methodologies to conduct market research, build and test prototypes, and rapidly iterate based on user feedback.
Developed all front-end and back-end components using Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Heroku, AWS, and other scalable technologies.
Sourced race content and managed systems to generate maps, list races, keep information up-to-date, review user-generated content, and publish monthly newsletters.
Partnered with local races, media partners, and running shops to provide incentive programs to NextBib users and build a growing online community of runners.

Jan 2013 — Feb 2014

Mozilla

Senior Product Manager, Mozilla Labs

Led an R&D project enabling websites to personalize news, shopping, recommendations, ads, and other web content to a Firefox user's interests while respecting that user's privacy choices.

Designed and launched personalization experiments to an audience of 200,000 study participants to improve our interest algorithms and identify user and publisher needs, in partnership with major publishers.
Crafted messaging and socialized product plans through blog posts, webcasts, press, and international community events to promote open discussion and build support among stakeholders, from community volunteers and end users to Fortune 500 companies.

Nov 2011 — Jan 2013

Mozilla

Senior Product Manager, App Marketplace

Led the development and international beta launch of the Firefox Marketplace app store for Firefox OS, bringing personalized discovery, global distribution, and simple monetization to developers of cross-platform HTML5 mobile apps.

Defined product roadmap and feature specifications for the consumer and developer experience of the Marketplace, including paid apps and in-app purchases.
Researched, selected, and negotiated agreements with multiple payment processors, including PayPal and Telefonica operator billing, and led their integration with the Marketplace and app platform.
Worked with Telefonica and other major international mobile operators to deliver the default app store experience for Firefox OS.
Directly managed a team of six supporting Marketplace operations, including community management, editorial staff, and developer relations.

Jan 2009 — Jan 2013

Mozilla

Senior Product Manager, Firefox Add-ons

Oversaw the Firefox customization experience and ecosystem of 600 million add-ons in use by millions of Firefox users every day.

Led the team responsible for management of the Firefox add-ons ecosystem and gallery, including product management, developer relations, community management, submission policies and review process, security, and daily operations.
Owned the Add-ons Gallery product, including roadmap, feature specifications, and shipping weekly releases with features to improve consumer discovery of add-ons and tools for developers, resulting in over 3 billion downloads.
Spearheaded the design, content, and implementation of a new Developer Hub one-stop-shop for tens of thousands of developers to learn about creating add-ons for Firefox and submit their work.
Revamped the review process and policies to improve review speed while maintaining quality, security, and efficient use of our volunteer community reviewers.
Advanced the add-ons platform and experience for 400M Firefox users by making add-ons compatible with new versions by default, disabling subversive add-ons installed without user consent, and designing the interactive Get Add-ons pane used 4M times daily.

Dec 2006 — Jan 2009

Mozilla

Web Developer (Contractor)

Designed, implemented, and maintained features for Mozilla web properties with tens of millions of visits and billions of API requests every day in over 30 localized languages.

Justin S.

Product & People Leader – ex. Square, Weebly, Mozilla