BambooHR

Grow past core HR

The charter: new product lines on a platform known for one thing.

BambooHR was a strong core HR system. The founders wanted more: add-on products that deepened the relationship with the companies and employees already using it. They asked me to lead product for three areas.

The people we served were HR leaders and managers at growing companies, and the employees whose reviews, feedback, and paychecks all ran through the product.

• Performance management already started; get it to market.
• Engagement eNPS, pulse surveys, and analytics for organizational health.
• Payroll a gap in the platform I thought was hard to defend.

Let the science lead

Multi-year research with PhDs in organizational behavior.

For performance management, I partnered with three PhDs in organizational behavior on a multi-year research project to measure what actually causes performance to change, a "smoking gun" instead of the usual assumptions, and then built the product on those principles.

I hired PMs to fill out the organizational health area and guided each through their product: an eNPS add-on with configurable, white-labelable surveys and ML-driven suggestions, a pulse survey feature, and a general analytics package. On payroll, I pushed for the company to get into it, and guided a PM through due diligence on a Bay Area payroll company that BambooHR then acquired.

Three new lines of business

Performance management, engagement, and payroll, each with its own revenue.

Performance management launched as a new add-on product line with a $25 million P&L. The engagement suite (eNPS, Pulse Surveys, and Analytics) added about $10 million. I then took over the integration and migration of the acquired payroll company, distributing the work of shoring up the experience and migrating customers across the PM team, and payroll added about $30 million in ARR.

The company itself ended the period at roughly $300 million in annual revenue.

• Performance management new add-on product line, $25M P&L.
• Payroll acquisition integration and migration, +$30M ARR.
• Engagement eNPS, Pulse Surveys, and Analytics, +$10M ARR.

Teach the PMs to run their own

What I took away, and why I was ready to move.

The best part of the role was the people: three PMs reporting to me and ten more I mentored, each guided through the hardest part of their first big product (an acquisition, an ML feature, a research-backed launch). Evidence-based product work, with scientists in the room, became part of how I operate.

The new lines were launched, integrated, and growing, and the team could run them. Once I reached that milestone, I knew it was time to move on. A friend from Lendio was building an AI company and wanted me to build its product organization.