SEEKING GROWTH PRODUCT MANAGER

Position Description

We are looking for a Growth Product Manager to conceive and execute initiatives and experiments to grow both Challengers (technology companies with challenges) and Innovators (expert solution providers). Our ideal candidate will be a self-starter and independent thinker with a lot of creativity who can help a startup build a strong customer base. The goal is to rapidly test new ideas and campaigns and iterate on new features with minimal support.
Our ideal candidate is an experienced growth hacker who is working as an independent contractor and wants to be part of a dynamic team that is committed to making a major change. We are looking for individuals with a lot of drive and passion who are looking at a long-term opportunity to join an exciting company. Preferably, we like an individual who can join our team as a full-time employee when there is sufficient work to warrant hiring a full-time employee and the company can afford to bring someone on board as an employee.This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere. Due to the remote nature of this role, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship.

Process

We have a unique process given the nature of our business:

  • Interested candidates submit their resumes or detailed Linkedin profile for review.
  • Qualified candidates will be invited to join our ecosystem as an Innovator or Specialist by receiving a nomination from us as our ecosystem is “by-invitation-only”.
  • By accepting our nomination candidates will be able to register on our platform and build a detailed profile and confidentially submit the samples of their work.
  • Qualified candidates will automatically receive a request for information (RFI) to view the challenge and provide a proposal.
  • Interested candidates will receive a request for proposal (RFP) and will be invited to provide a proposal.
  • Cenergim will evaluate the proposals and will select one or several candidates to participate in a three-month trial.
  • Depending on the result of the trial(s), Cenergim may issue another challenge or extend an offer to join the team.

Responsibilities

  • Create, refine, and implement a strategic, long-term vision for growing Cenergim’s Trusted Innovation Ecosystem including Challengers and Innovators.
  • Partner with UX Researchers, designers, data analysts, software engineers, content writers, and traffic acquisition specialists to continuously formulate and execute a roadmap to drive inbound demand to the Cenergim site and platform.
  • Collaborate with the founding team to develop and release features focused on growing the company’s revenue.
  • Lead the product development process from ideation, design, and specification all the way through to development, QA, A/B testing, and release of features.
  • Define and prioritize detailed objectives and specifications for initiatives ranging from new landing pages, UX improvements, user engagement tests, nurture flows, and more.
  • Define and execute high-quality qualitative and quantitative research best practices to evolve and inform the direction of product development.
  • Facilitate meetings and workshops that drive collaboration, prioritization, and most of all, maximize impact through good decision-making.
  • Oversee the design process, ensuring that all creative work is high quality and meets the business goals of the initiative.
  • Collaborate with your engineering team to maintain a user experience that is flaw-free and seamless while ensuring execution meets specifications.
  • Establish a shared understanding of business priorities and strategy with your partners.

Requirements

  • A BA/BS degree, preferably with a focus on Engineering or Business. Or, a significant experience that proves mastery of the domain.
  • 3+ years of professional experience working in product management.
  • First-class communication skills. Because this is a remote role, excellent written and verbal communication is of critical importance.
  • Experience working with design and engineering teams, driving the development of high-quality digital experiences that effectively accomplish business goals while maintaining brand standards.
  • Intermediate-level quantitative analytics skills including modeling, an understanding of relational databases, and some SQL skills.
  • A knack for creating simple and effective user interfaces and the ability to communicate ideas and direction through mockups and wireframes.
  • A strong understanding of design thinking, user research, and user testing.
  • An extremely sharp eye for detail and a strong sense of what types of creative products will be both effective for growth and representative of the Cenergim brand.
  • Able to thrive in rapidly changing environments, with a strong willingness and ability to eliminate ambiguity and execute.
  • You are the type of person that craves accountability.
  • A demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects at once.
  • Openness to receiving feedback and constructive criticism.

Company Values

We are seeking people with strong personal values to fit our culture today and help us maintain the same value system on a long-term basis. Here is a list of our core values and what we believe in:

  • Passion: be passionate about what you do or do not do at all. Put your heart and soul into whatever that you do.
  • Authenticity: be true to yourself and your values. Let your moral compass guide you.
  • Integrity: say what you mean and do what you say. Consistently live in accordance with your values.
  • Accountability: take ownership of your thoughts and actions.
  • Commitment: be dedicated to the cause and make it happen against all the odds. Be complete to the greatest extent possible.
  • Synergistic: collaborate and add value. Stand for and deliver outstanding outcomes that otherwise would never happen.
  • Innovation: if it already exists, it is obsolete. Stand for the possibility of causing a better outcome to occur.
  • Excellence: relentlessly pursue excellence in all that you do. Set new standards and strive to achieve them.
  • Simplicity: simplify and eliminate complexity. Make it easy to understand and use.
  • Respect: respect others and their opinions without judgment. Treat them the way you would like to be treated.
  • Win-win: commit to creating and maintaining a win-win scenario in all your dealings. Always remember that a win-lose proposition does not exist. If you believe so, you are delusional.
  • Diversity: cherish inclusion and prevent exclusion. Be a force against prejudice and discrimination.

WHAT IS CENERGIM?

Cenergim is an American technology solution provider located in the San Francisco Bay Area, U.S.A. We offer a managed co-innovation solution—software-with-a-service (SwaS)—to technology innovators who are seeking turnkey solutions to solve their complex innovation and business related challenges.

INNOVATORS EMPOWERING INNOVATORS TO SUCCEED

We are a team of passionate software innovation veterans with diverse backgrounds spanning the entire software innovation life-cycle.  We love to innovate and help our peers solve their pesky innovation challenges and mysteries.
We have all been where you are now and have experienced the pain you are experiencing. As employees, executives, entrepreneurs, and consultants we have dealt with countless challenges and have found ways to solve them.
So, we understand your unmet needs and challenges that cannot be solved using the existing solutions. As a result, we decided to develop a simple and smart solution to help our peers solve these challenges discreetly, reliably, and affordably. Our goal is to help you achieve your desired growth outcomes.

WE HELP TECHNOLOGY INNOVATORS SOLVE THEIR CHALLENGES AND ACHIEVE THEIR DESIRED GROWTH OUTCOMES

We enable innovation teams to become engines for growth by delivering outstanding outcomes through co-innovation. Our co-innovation platform facilitates collaboration with other innovators and elite solution providers in our ecosystem.

CO-INNOVATION IS THE FUTURE OF INNOVATION

Co-innovation is a collaborative and distributed form of open innovation and co-creation in a collaborative economy model. It’s a form of partnership where two or more innovators collaborate together throughout the innovation process anywhere from ideation to commercialization.
Co-innovators are a group of peers, subject matter experts, customers, or partners from one or more industries or ecosystems—”club-of-experts”—who share common objectives. Collectively, they generate breakthrough ideas, co-create new products and solutions, and solve complex innovation and business challenges that lead to achieving their desired business outcomes. 

INNOVATE SMARTER AND FASTER OR DIE IS THE NEW REALITY
Today’s innovators are under immense pressure from all directions as change is happening much faster than ever before. Digital transformation and Covid-19 Pandemic have also exacerbated this situation by creating technology, capability, and resource gaps in organizations.
As a result, innovators are facing many new challenges. Foremost, innovation is no longer a core competency and the engine of business growth for many who are still using a centralized and siloed approach to innovation.
Hence, they can no longer innovate fast enough to compete effectively in today’s transient and hyper-competitive markets as their innovation engine is misfiring. This means that their risk of failing is even higher than before. Cenergim Co-innovation solution is designed to solve this problem.

Source: INNOSIGHT/Richard N.Foster/Standard & Poor’s

 A TECTONIC SHIFT IS TRANSFORMING INNOVATION

Innovation is rapidly changing as a result of the collision of the following trends:

  • rapid advancements in smart technologies like AI, machine learning, virtual reality, blockchain, and analytics;
  • increased demand for simple DIFM solutions as a result of the increased complexity of DIY solutions;
  • the emergence of the new 3D’s operational model as a result of the complexity and inefficiency of the 3C’s model;
  • the advent of remote work policies and practices as a result of the pandemic;
  • disruptions in the business models and operations as a result of the emergence of the 4th industrial revolution and new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds;
  • the localization of the supply chains as a result of the disruptions caused to the globalized supply chains by the Covid-19 pandemic.

With this shift the complexity levels of innovations are also increasing at an unprecedented rate (32x in 5 years, 1,000x in 10 years, etc). This is putting 40% of global companies with a combined market value of $26T at the risk of disruption.
We realize that this model in not sustainable and that innovators need a new breed of solutions and ways of doing things not only to cope with these changes and survive, but also to succeed and thrive in the new environment.

THE FUTURE OF INNOVATION IS HERE AND WE ARE COMMITTED TO EMPOWER THE NEXT WAVE OF INNOVATIONS

The prevailing do-it-yourself (DIY) innovation paradigm is too complex and inefficient. It is based on an outdated R&D-driven methodology that uses a linear-value-chain model and advocates building and optimizing centralized DIY operations. This model was developed for businesses operating in the 3C’s infrastructure-driven world that was centralized, capital intensive and controlled by hierarchy.
However, this model is failing in the current 3D’s driven digital world—diversified, distributed, and decentralized—that is built on a multidimensional value-chain model and relies on everything as-a-service (XaaS), pay-per-use (PPU), and do-it-for-me (DIFM) business models to deliver outcomes.
Albeit beneficial to the SaaS revolution, the DIY model is failing in many cases as it requires massive capabilities and resources that are in short supply. The result has been widening capability and resource gaps that have incapacitated innovators and their ability to deliver on the expected outcomes.
Co-innovation has emerged as the next step in the evolution of innovation management solutions to meet the new demands in the current collaborative economy. Cenergim’s pioneering solution built on a 3D’s model fills the current market void and helps the growing technology companies to enjoy sustainable growth.

WE WANT TO PIONEER A WHOLE NEW MARKET SEGMENT FOR MANAGED CO-INNOVATION SOLUTIONS

We also realize that an unprecedented market opportunity exists for co-innovation solutions and we are committed to leverage our expertise to capitalize on this opportunity. We estimate that in the U.S. alone, a $4.95B opportunity exists as the growing SaaS companies are looking for DIFM solutions to stay competitive and grow faster.
Traditionally, these solutions have been only available to large global enterprises in the form of Managed BPO solutions. We intend to democratize the access to these solutions and enable small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) to benefit from them too.

INNOVATION IS THE ENGINE OF GROWTH BUT TOO MUCH COMPLEXITY IS CAUSING IT TO MISFIRE

The inconvenient truth is that the complexity level of innovation challenges is growing faster than the capabilities of innovators. While the majority have audacious innovation and growth objectives, their efforts are hampered by lack of adequate expertise and resources needed to solve complex challenges that they must solve to meet their goals.
We help innovators solve this problem by reducing the complexities for them. As a result, they can quickly fine-tune their innovation engine and grow faster.
 Let’s face it, the path from an innovative idea to success can be a long and treacherous one. Cenergim solution was created to provide a more expedient path between your ideas and execution; and to offer help when you need it, regardless of where you are in your journey.

CENERGIM CO-INNOVATION SOLUTION

Cenergim provides a turnkey co-innovation solution to technology innovators to help them solve their innovation and business challenges more efficiently.
We do this by offering a software-with-a-service (SwaS) solution that combines a high-tech software with hi-touch managed services. Our solution consists of three components:
  • Co-innovation Platform: An intuitive platform that enables “Challengers” to discreetly submit their challenges to Cenergim and co-innovate solutions with hand-picked partners vetted and invited by the Cenergim Success Management team. Our platform streamlines the capabilities of open innovation and co-creation platforms in one simple and easy-to-use platform;
  • Innovation Ecosystem: Communities of “Innovators” who have diverse backgrounds in disciplines related to innovation such as technology, marketing, operations, legal, security, human resources, finance, and consulting. Their expertise spans the entire innovation cycle from ideation to commercialization. They include individual consultants, specialized firms, trusted solution and technology providers, and educational and research institutions who collaboratively solve challenges and co-create tailored solutions;
  • Managed Services: Success Management services to properly orchestrate and manage all aspects of the challenge management process.

CO-INNOVATION IS THE EASIEST WAY TO SOLVE COMPLEX INNOVATION CHALLENGES

Innovators are a special breed with unique needs. They stand for possibilities where others only see challenges. They take risks to build a better future when others are still stuck in the old paradigms and ways of doing things. That is why innovators are the lifeblood and the engine of economic growth. Therefore, we believe that they deserve solutions that are tailor-made to their unique needs that enable them to succeed for the contribution that they make to society.

Innovators are a special breed with unique needs. They stand for possibilities where others only see challenges. They take risks to build a better future when others are still stuck in the old paradigms and ways of doing things. That is why innovators are the lifeblood and the engine of economic growth. Therefore, we believe that they deserve solutions that are tailor-made to their unique needs that enable them to succeed for the contribution that they make to society.
Unfortunately, the existing conventional solutions are designed for a functional world and are not appropriate for non-conformists like innovators as they do not follow the conventional wisdom and practices developed for the larger enterprises. It is like fitting a “square peg into a round hole”. Innovators encounter unique challenges every day that require out-of-the-box and non-conventional approaches to solve.
As innovators ourselves we believe that the easiest way to solve complex challenges is through co-innovation with other innovators as they understand the unique innovation challenges and have developed expert capabilities to solve them.
Hence, we empower innovators to collaborate together in a trusted ecosystem to solve their challenges. Think of it as a VIP club for innovators where multiple companies and experts collaborate together based on authenticity, qualification, and trust to accelerate innovation and co-create outstanding solutions and outcomes.
If you share our belief we love to hear from you, and if possible to join forces with you.

SALIENT BENEFITS TO TECHNOLOGY INNOVATORS

Some of the benefits that innovators can realize through using Cenergim solutions include:

  • Improving performance by removing capability and resource gaps;
  • Increasing speed-to-market by eliminating bottlenecks through collaboration;
  • Eliminating operational inefficiencies by removing the innovation silos and providing agile and lean solutions that span the entire innovation process;
  • Eliminating frictions in the existing centralized DIY operations by delivering adaptive solutions for flexible consumption via a DIFM pay-per-use model;
  • Reducing the risks and costs associated with building inefficient internal operations by using a 3D’s model;
  • Reducing costs by eliminating errors, inefficiencies, and opportunity costs;
  • Enabling outcome-driven innovation by augmenting capabilities through an elastic ecosystem;
  • Reducing complexity and errors by simplifying the innovation operations;
  • Outperforming the competition by improving innovation agility

EMPOWERING TECHNOLOGY INNOVATORS TO GROW FASTER

Our primary market consists of fast growing software innovators who are seeking turnkey solutions to rapidly solve their challenges and grow faster. However, we can also serve other technology enabled innovators on a case-by-case basis.

HELPING SOFTWARE INDUSTRY SOLVE THEIR UNIQUE CHALLENGES
Software industry is unique in many ways. Foremost, It is the only industry that provides solutions to all other industries. Consequently, it has enjoyed an explosive growth as the whole world now operates on software.
However, the software industry as a whole and SaaS providers, in particular, face unique challenges as well. These challenges make growing a successful SaaS business quite a daunting endeavor. The following list summarizes some of the salient challenges that software companies are facing today:
  • Building strong brand equity to attract new customers;
  • Differentiating offerings in a hyper-competitive market where 34,727 applications compete in 745 verticals;
  • Growing fast to maintain market share and attract new investments;
  • Dealing with constantly shifting customer needs and demands;
  • Coping with rapid advancements in technology;
  • Coping with the shrinking product life-cycles;
  • Developing new capabilities as a result of the explosion of skills—more than 8,500.

Sources: SAASX.com, For Entrepreneur, Key, ProfitWell, G2 Crowd, and McKinsey

SEEKING PASSIONATE INNOVATORS AND EXPERT SOLUTION PROVIDERS

Are you passionate about innovation and seeking new challenges or experiences? If yes, we would love to hear from you. If you are either a growing innovation company seeking to solve your challenges, or a solution provider looking to join our exclusive community and solve other innovators’ challenges, we encourage you to sign up on our platform and build a profile.
For inquiries regarding contracting or partnership opportunities please send an email to partner@cenergim.com. For other inquiries including job opportunities, please send an email to info@cenergim.com. We promise to reply in a reasonable timeframe.

Ron Dabbagh

Founder & CEO
25+ Years in Software Marketing

Hamid Hoseini

Platform Counsel
25+ Years in Software Engineer

Ahmad Joukar

Architecture & Data Sci.
20+ Years in Architecture & DBMS

Maryam Ardestani

UI / UX / Graphic Design
5+ Years in Design & Training

Mark Baudler

General Counsel
Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich &
Rosati (WSGR)

Laura Moreno Lucas

Advisor
Finance Executive And
Latina Entrepreneur

Tony Zirnoon

Advisor
Advisor To Cybersecurity Startups, Incubators,
And Accelerators