Russell Schmidt's Linkedin Analytics

I have been leading teams that create great user experiences at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. Whether I am building a new product from scratch, working on our go-to-market strategy, or revamping an existing product, I get excited about talking to customers to understand their problems and collaborating across design, engineering, and business stakeholders to come up with solutions. My current position is with InCharge Energy, working with an amazing team developing solutions for electrifying and managing charging for commercial fleets. I have really enjoyed working with startups and early stage companies. In my most recent role as Product Owner at EVgo, I led the development of next generation native mobile apps for our retail customers. My cross-functional team had developers, designers, and QA testers following Lean & Agile principles. Beginning with extensive user interviews and behavioral studies, we created customer personas, conducted competitive research, established stakeholder requirements, developed a product vision and strategy, and then began the marathon development of Android and iOS apps. I have been writing the user stories, conducting our sprint ceremonies, forecasting delivery dates, participating in ongoing user research and A/B testing, demoing the product, and presenting our progress and findings to leadership and the company at large. Prior to EVgo, I was a Product Manager at Synacor. At the time, Synacor was revenue-sharing partners with AT&T for their Start news aggregator web portal and Android app. During my tenure, the Android app grew to 800,000 unique downloads, with ARPU tripling, while the web portal, with 3 million daily uniques, was able to maintain $40M in ARR despite long term structural declines in AT&T's DSL business, which was the portal’s main distribution channel. I have worked with a number of startups as a contract developer with product management responsibilities, and was CEO of my own VoIP B2B service business for ten years, where I had the good fortune of a successful exit in 2015. Running a business made me humble and resourceful, while giving me a crash course in marketing, sales, janitorial services, and accounting. I believe leadership is about creating an environment for people to bring their best self to work. I make every effort to build competent, collaborative teams empowered to make smart decisions while having some fun in the process.