Joshua Herzig Marx

For 15 years, I'd been the first product leader at early-stage organizations. A bunch was at my own startup, where, despite exiting to Google, I discovered I was a better head of product than entrepreneur. Since then, I’ve run Product at Gasbuddy (consumer mobile, fintech, B2B Saas), Catalina Digital (martech, retail), Alyce (enterprise SaaS), and Brigit (consumer mobile fintech). I’ve stepped back from salaried work to be primary parent, and when not making lunches, scheduling doctor’s appointments, helping with homework, and nagging my kids to fold laundry, I coach founders, solo PMs, and first-time heads of product. Besides Growth Mentor, I'm a frequent participant in Lenny's Slack (private community for PMs), Rands Leadership Slack (a free and open community primarily focused on people in tech roles or at tech companies), and other product management communities.

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  Building a team

  Directly hired close to 100 people over my career. Currently advise startups on all aspects of hiring: developing JD, formulating hiring plan, sourcing candidates, running a process, making an offer.

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  Go to market strategy

  For a startup, you cannot separate your product strategy from your go-to-market strategy. Can provide advice, based on experience, for both B2B and B2C products including how to choose a growth lane and how to design a product your customers can purchase.

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  Idea validation

  Ideally, idea validation should be the first activity of a founder and focus on two things: (1) Do I have the resources to build my vision? (2) Is there a market that values what you want to build? Can you reach them? And are they able to purchase? Mostly we can answer these questions relatively cheaply and easily.

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  Product management

  I've been in product management for over 20 years, and in "head of product" roles for over 15. Retired from salaried work, I now coach and mentor founders, solo product managers, and first-time heads of product. Often, these are all the same person!

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  Remote work

  I sent my team home in February of 2020 when we could all see where this was heading. I've been working remotely since. Building teams and organizations in a remote world isn't just harder; it's different. I am happy to learn more about your needs and suggest tools, processes, and, most importantly, cultural shifts that can help you be more effective.

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  Venting frustration

  This is my favorite. One benefit of working with an outside coach or mentor is they don't know you and don't know their colleagues. If 30 minutes let out steam to someone with no agenda other than empathy sounds good, then book some time. And if you'd like some outsider feedback, I'm happy to provide that as well (and it's OK if you don't).

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  Amplitude

  10 years of experience

  I've been using product analytics tools for a long time. But Amplitude is the one I have the most experience with, having used it (and selected it) at multiple startups.

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  Dropbox

  12 years of experience

  I am extremely interested in what "expertise" means in Dropbox. Once upon a time I had about 10 gigs of free Dropbox storage just for going through all their growth-hacky activities. I still have my account but not sure why anymore.

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  JIRA

  11 years of experience

  I was briefly sort of famous for my Hot Take on Jira: "I...don't mind Jira? Kinda like it? Jira is an amazing no-code rapid application development tool for building the worlds' most boring and frustrating applications." That about sums it up. But don't ask my about Confluence. That stuff is the worst.

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  Quora

  16 years of experience

  For a while I was the top ranked Quora answer-er in the "Grocery" category. Who knows, I might still be! And I've made almost $14 with their monetization program. Ask me anything (about Grocery).

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  Software

  I've been part of tech companies building software products for over 20 years. This includes large companies (Google, FIS) as well as startups (GasBuddy, Brigit, Alyce).

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  Mobile

  I've been responsible for mobile apps at two companies: GasBuddy (at the time a top-10 travel app with more than 10M MAU) and Brigit (a mission-driven consumer fintech app with millions of free and hundreds of thousands of paying users).

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  FinTech

  My FinTech experience includes Google (working on Google Wallet/Android Pay/Google Pay), GasBuddy (built the first universal gas savings charge card for consumers), and Brigit (a mission-driven consumer app providing zero-interest cash advances and a credit-building savings program to subscribers).

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  Enterprise Software

  At GasBuddy (consumer mobile app w/ 10M MAU), enterprise SaaS product based on 2-million daily user contributions, signed 6+ major national fuel brands. At Alyce (revtech startup), transformed services offering to enterprise product, growing recurring revenue from 0 to $XX million in two year.

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  Mobile Apps

  I've been responsible for mobile apps at two companies: GasBuddy (at the time a top-10 travel app with more than 10M MAU) and Brigit (a mission-driven consumer fintech app with millions of free and hundreds of thousands of paying users).

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  Retail

  My experience is (happily!) years out of date, but I founded a marketing technology company for the loyalty-driven retail space. This primarily meant we ran highly targeted digital coupon programs at retailers, but we also powered "deal of the day" grocery programs. We were acquired by Google where I served as a retail expert. I also spent a year running digital coupons at the largest targeted couponing company in the world (Catalina Marketing).