Product Stride
Product Stride is a product consultancy led by Sean Sullivan with a focus on helping enterprise software companies become better at meeting the needs of their customers while supporting desired business outcomes.
Sean Sullivan
Sean Sullivan has spent over two decades in product management. As the founder of Product Stride, his goal is to bring some of his love of product, curiosity, and continuous desire to learn to organizations to help them catch their stride.
He began his career as a tools developer and data analyst at a boutique litigation consultancy, where he learned how a small scrappy company makes things happen with very limited resources. Eventually, that small firm decided its internal tools might make a great packaged product. Converting a service to a packaged product at, what later became DMI, was his first taste of product management.
Sean then joined Information Builders, a large private software company that invented the concept of 4GL programming and has been a perennial technology leader in Business Intelligence since 1975 time-sharing services. They had mature processes, incredible organic technology, and customers that loved them. Working in their ERP Solutions Division he led multiple partnerships with major ERP vendors and product management for integrated solutions at the leading edge of the industry transition to data warehousing and web-based enterprise apps.
Sean then had the great fortune to meet a small Israeli startup named Actimize and joined as their first Product Manager. Three years later they were bought by NICE Systems for $282m and continued to experience double-digit growth for many years after. During his 13 year tenure he grew the product organization to over 40 people; lead multiple organizational product team transformations; was key to multiple M&A processes; managed OEM partnerships; defined packaging & pricing; introduced UX Design practices; and helped launch, mature, and retire many products.
Actimize is where he honed his understanding of organizational design and the breadth of practices that Product Management frequently leverages. Being responsible for Portfolio Management and the evolving competencies of the field at a period when the whole product management discipline began rapidly maturing was lucky timing.
As AI/ML started trending in the business press, Sean took an opportunity to lead Product Marketing and Strategy for a new startup, ThetaRay. There he matured their product marketing, focused the positioning, and led major product design partnerships with global financial leaders. During that period ThetaRay doubled funding to $60m and won multiple industry and customer awards.
Sean has coached and advised technology startups and product leaders on the side for a few years. Launching Product Stride makes this an exciting, full-time pursuit.
In 2021, Sean joined Fairwords as VP of Product after working with them as a consulting client for nearly a year. Fairwords is a startup that has been in the market for several years and is on the path to finding its market fit.
In between projects, Sean is a streak runner and has run every single day since 6/26/2016. Follow him on Strava to see how dedicated he is to his pursuits.
Sean can be reached directly at sean[at]productstride[dot]com, LinkedIn, or Twitter @nyseans.