33 Digital

33 Digital is my personal incubator for building software businesses with soul. I either develop my own products in-house or partner with early-stage founders as a hands-on product and technology leader.

Founder

Passage

Head of Product and Tech

Crema

- Led design and implementation of analytics platform for one of the largest regional storage unit providers in the US, operating over 150 different properties.

Product Manager II

Everest

- Deployed and managed Credit Risk and Underwriting systems and experiences for Achieve.com, serving 1.5 million customers.

Sr. Product Manager

SwiftKick Mobile

- Brought ALL WORLD to market, a groundbreaking augmented reality app on iOS.
- Launched Document Camera to the App Store and led growth. Adopted by over 10,000 users.
- Led agency growth strategy and operations.

Product Manager

Frequency

- Released new metrics and campaign management on Frequency's CMP (Creative Management Platform), serving multiple multi-million dollar clients.

American Express

- Released new Cash Back Rewards Overview page on desktop and mobile web, deployed to tens of millions of cardmembers.
- Led user research initiatives and recommended improvements to the Membership Rewards program serving over 100 million cardmembers.

Product Owner

F Sharp

- Led project management for over 100 ad campaigns on Spotify desktop and mobile, driving tens of millions memorable engagements with Spotify user's favorite brands.

Lead Project Manager - Americas

I’m Sean 👋 Head of Product & Technology at Passage Studio, where we help companies with hard assets and devices unlock value through software and world-class UX.

I’m also the founder of 33 Digital, my personal incubator for new ideas. It’s where I build prototypes of my own or partner with early-stage founders as a hands-on product and technology leader. I don’t invest capital. I invest my time, skills, and operating experience to help conviction-driven founders go from zero to one.

My specialty is uncovering hidden growth levers across product, marketing, and operations and turning them into compounding systems that drive traction, efficiency, and scale.

Previously, I’ve led product, design, and growth at Spotify, American Express, and Achieve, and helped startups like HighRewards and TH!RST reach profitable MRR.

Let’s build.

"Why aren’t YOU just vibe coding? It’s so easy!"

This is toxic as hell.

I see a glut of content on LinkedIn and X nowadays of people claiming they can vibe code their way to a SaaS tool that prints $10k monthly.

It’s some mythical badge of honor.

Just by showing up and getting some sales for your glorified Excel sheet dashboard, you’ve outsmarted all your peers to easy money.

It makes vibe coding seem like a get-rich-quick scheme.

It’s also morally bankrupt as a business philosophy.

If you've tapped a vein with a product or offer this way, good for you. However, this doesn’t make you a savant.

It means you’re incredibly lucky to have caught spillover demand from the massive B2B SaaS market.

To me, vibe coding isn’t the point of building software. And the well will dry up.

Building anything, software included, is about deeply engaging with a problem or community. Customers are humans, and commerce binds us all together in this society. If you are in the game just to make a quick buck, the game will eventually catch up to you.

Vibe coding is fun, and I embrace it as another tool. But there are no shortcuts in the long game.

Sean Raftery

Product and Tech, Passage. Founder, 33 Digital. I build software that sells itself.

Most of us default to logic when we hit a wall.

We build frameworks, list out pros and cons, measure, model, and spreadsheet our way through uncertainty.

That works… for left-brain problems.

For things like budgeting, operations, or optimization.

But when the challenge is, how do we tell this story so people care?

What product experience will make this unforgettable?

How do we reimagine the future of this industry? … No spreadsheet can save you.

Those are right-brain problems and they demand creativity, intuition, and courage.

The trap?

Many leaders treat creative problems with coping strategies designed for linear ones.
- They delay decisions.
- They over analyze.
- They “wait for more data.”

Meanwhile, momentum dies.

The solution is to recognize the difference. 

To know when logic is your ally and when imagination has to take the lead.

At Passage Studio, this is where we thrive: navigating ambiguity, designing clarity, and shaping visions into products that resonate.

When you stop solving creative challenges with coping mechanisms, you start building things that actually move people.

It was a privilege to step in and help Arthur Dubois take his business Grid Aero out of stealth mode by building his website. 

https://www.grid.aero/

We got it done in a week, which wasn't easy, but I'm proud of how fast we can knock out projects when we need to. 

I even got to code some elements of it myself, which is always fun, I can't wait to see where Grid Aero goes.

They have such a sharp product sense and a rare ability to blend deep industry insight with clean design instincts. 

He is building something that should exist and now it finally does.

Congrats Arthur!

Open article: World’s Most Resilient Air Cargo Network by grid.aero

World’s Most Resilient Air Cargo Network

Your idea isn’t real until someone can click it.

Every founder has a list of “million-dollar ideas.”

The problem?

Most stay locked in notebooks, pitch decks, or endless team debates.

Ideas die in the “what if” stage not because they’re bad but because they never get the chance to be tested.

That’s where Design Sprints come in.

In just 3–4 weeks, we take your concept and strip away the fluff to uncover the core value.

We turn that into a clickable prototype you can:
- Put in front of customers for feedback.
- Show investors to unlock funding.
- Rally your team around so they can see the vision.

The magic of a sprint isn’t just speed it’s precision.

You validate the right thing before you invest months (and a mountain of cash) into development.

It’s the fastest path from “I think this will work” → “I know this will work.”

If you want to see your idea come to life in weeks, not years, let’s run a sprint.

If you’ve got a product in the physical world and want to unlock its next chapter through software, let’s talk.

DM me or visit passage.studio

He follows his curiosity and creates to make his life and the lives around him better. 

And so do I.

In 2003, my small New Jersey town got a new cable provider. With it came TechTV, and unknowingly, one of my biggest influences: Kevin Rose. 

Kevin was the young, cool host on The Screen Savers, dropping "dark tips" about which Kazaa version wouldn't destroy your PC with spyware.

He made nerdy hardware specs seem genuinely cool, even if the girls at my school definitely weren't watching.

Then in 2004, Kevin launched Digg, which was basically Reddit before Reddit existed. Through Digg, Diggnation, and his pioneering work in podcasting, I got a backstage pass to what building products actually looked like. 

While I rode the bus and cut lawns (my first business), I absorbed every episode on my iPod, learning about design, development, and what a life spent with fellow nerds could be. 

Kevin showed me something vital: you could build a career following your curiosities in a Jersey town where nobody shared my obsession with gadgets, that mattered.

Now Kevin's in his elder statesman phase, talking openly about overcoming introversion and social anxiety through meditation and sobriety. 

I see my younger self in his stories another anxious kid who found refuge in technology and the internet.

It's no coincidence I followed his path as a builder and creator. 

Kevin taught me to follow curiosity and create to make life better for yourself and others.

Got some questions about how I manage my calendar, so I threw together this quick video.

My approach isn’t fancy, but it keeps me on track with work and grounded in the rest of my life.

I’ve realized a pattern in how I approach my own projects.

I come up with an idea.

I tinker with it privately.

I refine, refine, refine.

By the time I finally share it, it feels stale.

And when I do share, my audience has no context.

“Why is this guy suddenly dropping this random thing?”

I've noticed that the builders who generate momentum early don’t wait until their product is polished. 

They talk about it while it’s taking shape.

They ask dumb questions, test interest, and let people in on the process.

By the time they launch, there’s already a group excited to support them.

For me, the fear has been in going public too soon.

I default to the “safe” audience, the handful of people close to me. 

But if I want to grow, I have to build in public earlier. 

Share ideas before they’re ready. Invite people into the messy middle.

So this is a long way of saying I'm going to start showing my work as it happens. 

Stay tuned.

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