James Harker-Syren Email & Phone Number

Stockholm, Se

Stockholm, Stockholm County, Sweden

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San Diego, Ca

Strategic consultant focused on > Product management and product strategy> Hands-on market, customer and product analysis to drive product design and development.> Help teams deliver great customer experiences by delighting customers> Mobile strategy, road-mapping, and product designI am looking for consulting opportunities, please contact me.

Dallas, Texas, United States

Played multiple roles over 3 and a half years. * Upsell A/B testing with a focus on revenue optimization for tax season 2017. Drove $1M+ in incremental revenue. Established A/B testing reporting principles and formats for executive leadership* Helped lead the strategic planning process and roadmap for TaxAct* Facilitated a 12-week Product Management training course with the product management team while they company was without a VP of Product Management.* Project management leader for BluPrint, a free ancillary product for TaxAct customers. BluPrint used a customer's tax information to develop a financial savings plan which includes says most customers could save $1000's on their taxes and debt. My role was the develop this product from idea, through design and execution and delivery. I drove two versions if this product delivering over $1M.* Partnered with marketing to lead the conceptualization, testing and development of features that supported TaxAct new brand positioning: 'Surprisingly Legal'.

Stockholm, Sweden

Tele2 Group (a wireless provider like Verizon or AT&T) delivers mobile and fixed services in 8 countries in Europe. I was part of a new team at Tele2 whose mandate was to improve critical web performance metrics globally.My role was to improve web conversion globally. I put in place a program to improve data-driven decision making, improve focus on the customer, drive A/B testing and establish personalization.

Stockholm, Sweden

Led a team of 16 consisting of product management, business development and analysts. eBay Sweden was losing money and in a turn around situation. I was brought on by a new CEO to help turnaround the business. I was responsible for reorganizing the product team to better focus on our business and product objectives. As part of our return to profitability we had to reduce staff by approximately 40%. Working closely with the CEO, we defined a new product strategy. Our technology stack is independent from eBay and only used in Sweden. We delivered a complete rewrite of the customer experience in incremental steps (build-measure-learn). We delivered a responsive mobile web and app experience; an improved search experience; and an innovative new product selling/listing experience. Within 18 months we turned the business from negative 20% to profitability. As part of the executive leadership team in Stockholm, I helped drive 1 year plans and helped lead strategic reviews with central eBay.

San Diego

TurboTax is Do-It-Yourself tax software (web, desktop and mobile) used by 23M people in the US and generates over $1.5B in revenue. TurboTax makes the complex US tax code simple by asking a series of questions that are personalized and tailored for the individual’s situation. - Led the product management team of 10. Hired (3 internal, 6 external), coached and grew product management team. - Led the process to define product strategy and roadmap with the PM team in partnership with marketing and senior leaders. Responsible for prioritizing the portfolio of initiatives against short and long term goals. Regularly presented to senior leadership on strategies and priorities.- Fostered a customer-focused culture within the PM team. Ensured we developed deep customer empathy, identified big customer problems, clearly defined outcomes metrics and success, and iterated on solutions to problems with customers. - Key leader during significant people, process and technology transformation over past 2 years. Deeply worked with a small team on lean testing to learn our way from TurboTax being a software only business to software & services business. Worked directly with the engineering teams, using agile, to define product requirements and sprint planning.

San Diego

- Drove the Free product strategy and delivery for TurboTax: one of the most successful Freemium models in the industry. Free has driven a significant portion of TurboTax growth in past 4 years. - Was invited to Intuit's prestigious leadership traiing programs 3 years in a row: FastPath 1, Fast Path II, Director College. - Trained as an Innovation Catalyst. Innovation Catalysts facilitate teams, using a number of techniques, to help focus and drive innovation and delight customers

London, United Kingdom

Flytxt delivers interactive mobile technology solutions for marketing and content providers via SMS & MMS. Founded in 2000, Flytxt literary defined the market and interaction paradigms as it worked with key early customers in the market. - Led the efforts to transition Flytxt from a custom solution provider (agency model) to a product company. Played a hands-on role of product manager and user interface designer during a critical phase of the transformation. Conducted extensive customer interviews and usability reviews of prototypes and betas with key customers. - Led the team to build and deliver a web-based application that allowed customers around the world to build and manage their own mobile marketing campaigns. - Responsible for growing the development team from 6 to 13 including the hiring and mentoring of development and operations team managers.- As a member of the executive staff, involved in product and company strategy, fund raising, budgets, sales calls and board presentations. - Responsible for putting more mature processes for the operations team in place to keep pace with the growing customer expectations of quality, reliability and uptime in its 24x7 operations data center.

Menlo Park, Ca

Director of engineering for a 24-member development team building Kana Connect, an N-tier Java-based enterprise application for electronic direct marketing. Connect allows for marketing managers to build customer loyalty by communicating in an individualized way to millions of customers. - After the merger between Kana and Connectify, established a strong hiring process and built the team from 10 to 24 developers in 9 months. - Responsible for setting employee goals and identifying areas for growth. Placed a strong emphasis on mentoring; promoting and encouraging leadership responsibilities. As the team grew, organized the team around two first-level managers. - Through aggressive hiring and five acquisitions, Kana grew from 65 employees to 1200 employees in 9 months. The company quickly became a complex, global, multi-product corporation. Drove product and business issues through cross-functional product team meetings. Presented to e-staff on key product decision points. Worked with other product teams to ensure product integration requirements were accomplished. - Presented product capabilities and architecture in dozens of sales calls and was deeply involved in closing several large deals. First year’s sales growth was impressive, generating 15 million dollars from 80 new customers. Connect customers included eBay, Bank of America, The State of California, Sprint and internationally Adidas, News International, and Virgin.

San Mateo, Ca

Founding employee of a start-up company building a Java-based, high performance, multi-platform, distributed enterprise application for the new product category of Electronic Direct Marketing. - Quickly became an expert in direct marketing. Translated the product vision into a set of customer requirements and a detailed product specification. Met with industry leaders to validate our vision of the translation from Direct Marketing into Electronic Direct Marketing. - Translated product requirements into technical requirements. Oversaw the evaluation of a range of technologies and selection of those most appropriate for balancing the competing market objectives of time-to-market, reliability, performance, cost and multi-platform support. Facilitated the architecture definition in order to achieve massive scalability. - Led the engineering due diligence with perspective venture capitalists and helped secure a 4 million dollar first round of financing.- In twelve intense months, built the team, built the product and had two customers go live. - In August 1999, with 35 employees and 5 customers, Connectify was acquired by Kana Software. Successfully integrated the development team into the larger Kana, smoothing the transition by helping set expectations and address concerns.

Santa Clara, Ca

Engineering manager for a 9-person development and QA team building Claris Organizer, a fully integrated Personal Information Manager (PIM) for Macintosh and Windows computers. It allowed customers to organize their personal contacts, calendars, tasks and notes in an integrated fashion.

Philadelphia, Pa

One of three founders of a self-funded software company we started our senior year in college.Developed one of the world's first Personal Information Managers (an integrated calendar, contacts, to do and notes management -- similar to Microsoft Outlook but several years before Outlook was created). One of two engineers that developed the product from scratch. Acquired in April 1994 by Claris, Apple Computer’s software subsidiary, and became Claris Organizer. Won a MacUser Eddy in 1994 for 'Best Product of the Year.'

Bachelors Of Applied Science, Computer Science

Education record