Paul Gilliam · Product Leader · Teams, Strategy, and Outcomes That Scale
I Rally Teams
Around Problems
Worth Solving.
Not problems that look good in a roadmap. Problems validated in the field, shaped with customers, and worth paying for.
I’ve spent 8+ years working the way founders do: in customer interviews, on sales calls, at trade shows, and in the data. Then I build cross-functional teams around a clear story and ship something that moves the business.
About
The best products start with the right problem and the right people around it.
The best products I’ve shipped didn’t start with a roadmap. They started with a conversation, usually in a customer’s office, on a sales call, or at a trade show booth where someone finally said what they actually needed.
I’ve conducted 200+ customer discovery interviews, personally supported key sales deals, attended industry conferences to stay close to the market, and rallied cross-functional teams of 10+ to turn insight into something real. At SmartMoving I led the adoption of AI prototyping as a core part of how we aligned executives and validated ideas before committing engineering resources, collapsing cycles that used to take months.
Today I continue pushing that edge, using AI to accelerate discovery, sharpen strategy, and build faster than ever. I write about it at The Product Pipeline on Substack.
What drives me is the moment a product clicks for someone. When a dispatcher finally has a clear view of their day. When an assortment planner stops second-guessing a forecast. When a moving company operator can explain their own business using data you helped build. That’s why I do this.
I don't write requirements until I've talked to customers. Assumptions are expensive. Conversations are cheap.
The best product decisions I've made came from getting engineering, sales, marketing, and ops in the same room around the same customer problem.
Every feature, every metric, every decision gets filtered through one question: does this make life meaningfully better for the person using it?
Featured Work
Products built by getting close to the customer and rallying teams around a shared vision.
SmartMoving: From Niche CRM to Operations Platform
SmartMoving Software · Jan 2024 – Jan 2026
SmartMoving was built by a founder who was a salesperson at heart, and the product reflected that. It was genuinely great at opportunity management and everyone in the moving industry knew it as “the CRM for movers.” The problem was the company wanted to move upmarket to serve larger operators, and a CRM reputation wasn’t going to get them there.
When I joined, the bigger challenge wasn’t just adding features. The existing pieces didn’t clearly connect into a coherent platform story for enterprise buyers. I spent time at industry trade shows talking directly to movers who had never considered SmartMoving for their operation because they didn’t know it could do more. That field research shaped everything. Over two years I led the expansion into seven new capability areas, rallying a cross-functional team of 10+ and working alongside sales and CS to make sure every decision was grounded in what larger operators actually needed.
Known only as a sales CRM, the platform lacked the operational depth to move upmarket. Larger movers did not see themselves in the product.
Trade show discovery, 200+ customer sessions with sales and CS, AI prototypes to align executives, and seven capabilities shipped to tell a new platform story.
Contributed to $6M ARR growth, $1M+ from payments alone, and a national Inc. Magazine Innovation Award for Smart Insights.
Special Needs Student Transportation Platform
First Student · 2021 – 2022
Hand-selected to build an entirely new vertical from scratch. I traveled to school bus depots, sat with district administrators, and embedded myself in the day-to-day before writing a single requirement. Then I led a 40-person contractor team to ship a web app, two mobile apps, and cloud infrastructure serving 1,000+ students across 10+ districts.
First Student had no platform for special needs transportation. Districts were managing complex, high-stakes logistics with fragmented tools and no operational visibility.
Traveled to school bus depots, embedded with 3 pilot districts before writing a requirement, then led a 40-person contractor team through full delivery with GTM alignment alongside sales and marketing.
Launched a $1M platform spanning a web app and 2 mobile apps, serving 1,000+ students across 10+ districts, on time and on budget.
Building a Product Department from the Ground Up
EverDriven · 2018 – 2020
Joined as a QA advocate and helped found the product department, building the processes, culture, and cross-functional relationships from scratch. Became a driver of better technical solutions for dispatchers, coordinators, and executive teams, turning unstructured operational data into tools people actually relied on.
No product department existed. Engineering and ops made decisions in isolation, with no customer-facing function advocating for better solutions or a coherent product vision.
Started as a QA advocate to deeply understand user pain, then built the product function from scratch including processes, tools, and a cross-functional culture centered on the customer.
30% reduction in operational waste, dispatcher and coordinator workflows transformed, and a fully functioning product department established where none existed before.
Retail Assortment Planning: Making AI Usable
Zebra Technologies · 2022 – 2024
Embedded with pre-sales and data science teams to solve a real user problem: assortment planners at major retailers were drowning in raw model outputs with no way to act on them. I led discovery with planners at JCPenney, The Children’s Place, and Evereve to understand their actual workflow, then reframed the product from a data dump into something they could trust and use.
Enterprise retailers could not trust their forecasts. AI/ML models produced raw outputs that assortment planners at JCPenney, The Children's Place, and Evereve had no way to interpret or act on.
Embedded directly with pre-sales, sales, and data science teams to run discovery with planners in their actual workflow, then reframed the product from a data output into a decision-support tool.
17% improvement in forecast accuracy across roughly 1,000 variables, 19% reduction in manual planning work, and time-to-market accelerated by 30%.
Career Timeline
Senior Manager, Product Management
Capital One Software · Jan 2026 – Present
Leading product strategy for an enterprise data platform, analyzing customer requirements to ensure product teams have the infrastructure and solutions needed to solve complex data and storytelling problems worth selling. Focused on enabling teams and their customers to tell the right data stories by turning complex data into clear answers that drive decisions.
Senior Product Manager
FeaturedSmartMoving Software · Jan 2024 – Jan 2026
Built an Inc. Award-winning analytics platform from scratch. Validated a $1.2M opportunity with 100% beta retention. Helped drive $6M ARR growth through customer-led discovery and cross-functional execution.
Senior Product Manager
Zebra Technologies · Nov 2022 – Jan 2024
Embedded with sales and data science teams at major retailers to turn AI/ML outputs into tools assortment planners actually used, improving forecast accuracy by 17% across roughly 1,000 variables.
Product Manager
Koddi · Jun 2022 – Nov 2022
Worked directly with Booking.com to simplify targeted ad creation for hoteliers. Discovery-led improvements resulted in 15% better ad targeting accuracy.
Senior Product Manager
First Student · Sep 2021 – Jun 2022
Hand-selected to build a new vertical from zero. Traveled to school bus depots, embedded with 3 pilot districts, and led 40 contractors to ship a $1M platform serving 1,000+ students.
Senior Business Analyst
EZLynx · Aug 2020 – Aug 2021
Led growth of an insurance platform integration marketplace, scaled the product ecosystem, and helped grow the product team capabilities alongside the product itself.
Product Manager
EverDriven · 2018 – 2020
Helped found the product department. Built dispatcher planning tools and executive dashboards that reduced operational waste by 30%, starting from an empathetic QA mindset and growing into a full product function.
How I Work
The frameworks, methods, and tools I reach for to build products that matter.
Product Leadership
Cross-Functional Execution
AI and Data Fluency
Team and Process Building
Education
MBA — Business Management
Quantic School of Business and Technology
Platform Economics · Competitive Analysis · Strategic Market Development
B.S. Information Systems and Business
University of Colorado Colorado Springs · 4.0 GPA, Summa Cum Laude
Enterprise Platform Architecture · Strategic Systems Design
Let’s Work Together
If you’re building something
worth building, let’s talk.
I’m drawn to senior and director-level roles where getting close to the customer is the strategy, not an afterthought. Where cross-functional teams rally around a real problem and ship something that makes someone’s day better.
If that’s the kind of product team you’re building, I’d love to be part of it.