Bruce McCarthy, Product Culture Founder

Ever since he was a child, Bruce has been making things. Having spent a lifetime as a builder and innovator, today he has a passion for helping teams work together better to develop compelling products and services. He’s been called the face of Boston product management and (for Top Gear fans) the product management Stig.

Bruce is a serial entrepreneur and leader of product teams in organizations ranging from startups like NetProspex to market leaders such as ATG, Oracle and D&B. Along the way, he demonstrated leadership in areas ranging from marketing to acquisitions to partnerships, design, agile enablement, product management, and development.

Bruce founded Product Culture in 2018 to help product teams succeed through skill building, coaching and organizational design, working with organizations like Toast, Salsify, Klaviyo, Shopfully, EGYM, Nuance, Huawei, and Johnson & Johnson. He is a prolific writer and sought-after speaker at product management, development, and innovation events around the world. He runs an invitation-only Forum for Chief Product Officers. Bruce led the Boston Product Management Association for 5+ years and is a regular judge at Harvard Business School's New Venture Competition.

Steve Blank said about Bruce's bestselling book, Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction While Embracing Uncertainty, “It’s about time someone brought product roadmapping out of the dark ages of waterfall development and made it into the strategic communications tool it should be. McCarthy and team have cracked the code.”

Frank Qiu, Partner

Frank is Partner of Product Culture and Co-Founder of High-Growth CPO Forum. During his 15+ year career, Frank has held leadership roles driving product development, partnership management, customer engagement and go-to-market for organizations ranging from small businesses to market leaders such as Iron Mountain, Intel and Forward Advantage. He built product portfolio evaluation processes and new product introduction processes that led to new revenue opportunities and faster time-to-market.

Frank has worked with organizations ranging from 30 employees to the Fortune 100 in business strategy, product strategy, agile process development, team development and collaboration. He has served as a mentor for the Boston Product Management Association since 2013. Frank received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University and MBA from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Frank is a native of Nanjing, China, and speaks fluent Mandarin.

Melissa Appel, Coach

Melissa Appel is a Coach at Product Culture. In her product management career, somehow Melissa always ends up with the most gnarly projects that no one else wants, but she loves it. It’s not a terrible mess, it’s an opportunity. She can simplify the situation by asking the right questions and seeing through the politics to get at the root of the problem.

Melissa has 20 years of experience in product management and UX research, and has worked in a number of different industries, including medical devices, manufacturing, marketing, energy, sustainability, and supply chain. Melissa has worked for and with companies ranging in size from 3 people in a dining room to 15,000 people spread across multiple continents. She has managed, coached, mentored, or advised people ranging from individual contributors to CEOs. In addition to working with Product Culture, she and Bruce are working on a new book on stakeholder management.

Melissa has a Bachelor of Engineering in mechanical engineering from The Cooper Union, and an interdisciplinary Master of Product Development from Carnegie Mellon.

Nina Mitchell, Chief of Staff

Nina is Chief of Staff at Product Culture, where she works on strategy, operations and marketing. She also helps craft our publications and courses. Nina has worked as a Product Manager or Product Marketing Manager for Salesforce, Sophos, Color Genomics and Away.com.

Nina graduated from Harvard with a BA in Social Studies and received an MBA and Master’s in Information Systems from Boston University. A happy writer, she has written for TheAtlantic.com, NPR station WBUR, and TheMoth. Her book, After Words, was published in 2018

Phil Hornby, Coach

Phil is a Coach at Product Culture, where he focused on coaching and workshops. He's a product leader and a technologist with more than 20 years industry experience. He's done lots of jobs including product management, project management, operations development, sales, and marketing across various industries. He's most at home helping, building and leading high-performing, global product teams.

Phil's a Brit, based in the UK. He has a Masters in Engineering and an MBA, both from the University of Hull. Over the years Phil has helped thousands of individuals across hundreds of companies improve at delivering technology products through high-impact workshops and coaching. He's a regular speaker at product events and cohost of Talking Roadmaps, a YouTube channel and podcast dedicated to exploring the craft of roadmapping with experts and practitioners.

Some of the Organizations We’ve Helped

Need Help with your Product Culture?

Testimonials

“Coach, trusted advisor, organizational therapist — like me, you’ll probably hire Bruce because of his experience in product management or his skills as an agile coach. Then you’ll find he can quickly and effectively diagnose, treat, and improve whatever ails your organization. If you are not getting what you need from your team and you are not sure why, seek Bruce’s advice.

Bruce had a dramatic effect on the relationship between product management and engineering, coaching them to collaborate on a common set of objectives. A key focus for us was profitability and with Bruce’s help we are hitting those targets." — Mike Aeshliman, VP of Engineering & Product, Localytics

“We hired Bruce to do a simple agile training but his effects were felt at every level of the company. Bruce’s experience and outside perspective helped make our management meetings more effective, enabled key executives to operate at a more strategic level, and organized our development teams for higher output. He has a knack for making difficult conversations easier that has empowered my team to take charge and drive results.” — David Bairstow, VP of Products, Skyhook Wireless

"Bruce provided the knowledgeable outside perspective that we needed to help us through a critical transition in our business. He listened to us, and provided the coaching and mentoring my team needed to develop and articulate our strategy.

My people have grown in their roles, we have a compelling roadmap, and we are well-positioned for success. We benefited greatly from Bruce's experience and guidance, and I look forward to working together again in the near future.” — Sarah McCrary, CEO, Leaf

"Bruce McCarthy and his team were able to leverage their years of experience to provide an objective assessment of my team's readiness to tackle our new challenges in launching a SaaS business. Their analysis was right on and their advice had an immediate and dramatic effect on my team. With their help, we are well on our way toward our growth goals in this new market. I would highly recommend them to any organization that wants to improve its ability to bring new products to market." — Fielder Hiss, Vice President of Marketing and Product Management, EnerNOC

"UpUp Labs has played a key role in our product management transformation. They helped us significantly improve our product management team's operational model, practices, and competencies. Their work has made a big difference here, our speed to market is accelerating, our product managers are becoming more effective, and we are now transforming the entire organization to an agile model with their help." — Andrea Blades, Senior Director Global eCommerce & Product Management, Vistaprint

“In just 30min Bruce helped us make the optimal choice that had
kept us in meetings and agony for 3 weeks. If you have a product-
related challenge, I strongly recommend that you talk to Bruce.” —Misha Sobolev, Founder and CEO, ExecFile

Contact Us

Want to discuss how you and your organization can benefit from product culture?