Thanks for reading my blog. I hope my writing is helpful to you. I’m passionate about self improvement, leadership, and building great products, which is what I usually write about.
I believe in making things better than I found them and want to share what I have learned from some of the best product minds in Silicon Valley and beyond.
I love helping and learning from others, comparing notes and trading book recommendations (I read ~25 books a year), so please feel free to contact me on Twitter @Evanish or at evanish dot j at gmail dot com to share feedback, a book, or to say hi.
Currently, I’m the founder of Lighthouse…
Lighthouse helps managers be great leaders. In today’s labor market, you cannot afford to lose your best people, but bad managers are one of the biggest reasons people leave companies. If you’ve ever sat frustrated at your desk feeling like no one is listening to you or had a team that didn’t respond to you, you’ve felt this pain.
I’ve created a framework based on what I’ve learned from studying and interviewing great leaders. It has helped me retain and develop great talent on my teams and now that process is a product to help you as well. You can sign up to learn more at GetLighthouse.com and learn about management and leadership on our blog at GetLighthouse.com/Blog, or take one of our courses at Lessons.GetLighthouse.com.
… and I’m doing Product Consulting to help Product-minded Founders & First PMs
For over a decade, I’ve been a B2B SaaS founder focused on product, and an early stage product manager, always focused on the quest for product-market fit and launching new software products.
I know how hard it is to get your first 10 customers, and the steep learning curve and major pitfalls that come with being a first PM. That’s why I’m offering a limited number of slots to help coach product minded founders and first PMs to help with:
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Product Cycles: If your team has timelines that always slip, have more bugs or last minute changes than hoped, and doesn’t meet customer needs & sales expectations.
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Product Process: If you’re a founder lacking time to coach and develop your first/junior PM who is struggling, or you don’t have enough time or lacking some skills yourself for the product responsibilities you have as a busy founder.
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Product Problems: Or you face any of a variety of product challenges: Churn, low product engagement/NPS, product/market fit questions, getting early-adopters, or siloed departments in conflict with the product team.
Any of these can sink your company at the worst, or at the least waste costly engineering cycles, all while damaging morale.
Why take the long way, learning by trial and error, when I can help you jump right to a solid answer?
It’s exactly what Mario Minnaert, Product Owner at Higher Learning Technologies, did when I helped him:
“Over the past two and a half years, Jason has mentored me on customer development, communication, stakeholder management and countless other aspects of being a customer-driven product leader. Because of his mentorship, I’ve become our platform lead, the senior manager of customer experience, and was recently voted as MVP by the team at our startup in Iowa.
It’s clear that Jason has a learner’s mindset and is an expert on leadership, but above all, I’m constantly blown away by his ability to quickly understand my problems and his strong desire to help me learn and grow as a PM and person. I’ve saved months and years of future mistakes from talking to Jason and listening to his advice.
I would highly recommend Jason as an executive, product lead, manager, or coach at any company and if I ever had the opportunity to work under him, it would be a no-brainer.”
I’ve been there and done that, whether bootstrapping my startups, or helping venture backed startups:
- Scale from hundreds to thousands of customers in a competitive market
- Validate an opportunity that becomes a million dollar + per year business line
- Overcome the challenges that come with going from “we have a great idea” to “we have a cohort of early adopters or design partners that love what we’re doing”
- Get to the root cause of crippling churn, communicate to customers in crisis, fix low product team morale, and transform how the company listens to and interacts with customers
If you’re nodding along to some of these challenges, and want to change, then sign up for a free call here, because I’ll do my best to help you whether you’re a fit for coaching or not.
In the press:
I’ve been fortunate to have some really cool press coverage and interviews. You can see some here:
Jason Evanish shares his process for understanding customers
– ProductPeople.TV Interview (Part II) with Kyle Fox and Justin Jackson March 27, 2013
Jason Evanish moves to San Francisco
– ProductPeople.TV Interview (Part I) with Kyle Fox and Justin Jackson March 20, 2013
How to Interview Customers
– Mixergy Interview with Andrew Warner August 16, 2012
Catching up with Young Mass Innovators
– WGBH Boston’s Innovation Hub with Kara Miller March 25, 2012
Boston’s Young Entrepreneurs
– WGBH Boston’s Innovation Hub with Kara Miller December 3, 2011
For Facebook and Zuckerberg, location matters
– NPR Market Radio by Curt Nickisch November 7, 2011
Facebook Founder Gives a Shout-Out to Boston
– NPR on WBUR Boston by Curt Nickisch, November 1, 2011
A Need-to-Know Guy: How one young Bostonian became a networking king
– Fast Company Magazine by Curt Nickisch, November 2011 Issue
Unlimited Vacation, but can you take it?
– The Wall Street Journal by Sue Shellenbarger, July, 20, 2011
Person of Interest: Jason Evanish
– Boston Magazine by Curt Nickisch, July 2011 Issue