Zachary Cohn

Increasing the amount of awesome in the world. zaccohn@gmail.com

Entrepreneur, product leader, consultant, community organizer, maker, civil servant.

And occasionally I jump on things.

Currently open to new opportunities in managing product and engineering teams

About

Zac lives in Seattle and likes to start things. Sometimes it's companies, and sometimes it's trouble.

He's sold one company, given away another, and shut down many more. He's led Product and Engineering organizations, consulted for companies and governments, organized community events, and backflipped across the world.

Companies

Spark Hire

Director of Product and Engineering

  • Managed the nine person Product and Engineering department, build professional leveling matrix to offer clear and defined expectations for annual reviews and promotions, provided detailed feedback and active coaching to direct reports with performance or behavioral problems that lead to significant improvement, facilitated a successful conflict mediation and relationship building process to resolve long-standing interpersonal issues between two key engineers.
  • Modernized technology and processes, including introducing CI/CD pipelines, linting, unit tests, automated dependency and vulnerability scanning, infrastructure as code and a "cattle not pets" mindset shift, pull requests and code reviews, githubflow branching strategies.
  • Introduced user research and testing into the product development process, training 5 people across two cross-functional teams the fundamentals of user research while building a research pipeline to ensure there were always users available for interviewing.
  • Formalized a kanban-esque product management workflow, trained team on breaking projects apart into discrete and well defined tickets, defined and prioritized a roadmap with the "Now, Next, Later" approach, successfully shipped features to address Sales and Customer Success's top 5 reasons deals fail or customers churn.

January 2022 - July 2023

DemandStar

Head of Product

  • Built and executed the product roadmap.
  • Reported to the CEO and Board of Directors.
  • Managed 3 teams of engineers.
  • Built and operated a process for receiving and triaging bug reports and feature requests.
  • Wrote tickets and managed backlogs.
  • Implemented an A/B testing suite and several different types of metrics reporting systems.
  • Monitored and regularly reported out business and technical metrics to the CEO, my peers, the company, and the Board.
  • Conducted user research with customers to understand their challenges and identify potential new products.
  • Tested mockups and prototypes with customers.
  • Identified and addressed holes in our flywheel - missing products, features, processes, automations, etc.

June 2020 - November 2021

Testyourwaterforlead.com

Founder, Shut down

How safe is your water? Life is complicated. Testing your water for lead shouldn't be. Testyourwaterforlead.com acted as middleman between consumers and water testing laboratories to facilitate a more consumer friendly experience.

May 2017 - October 2017

Amazing Airfare

Founder, Sold

Insane curated flight deals, sent straight to you. 50% off or more international airfare. Amazing Airfare will email or text you amazing deals on airfare so you never miss out on a life changing trip.

Wrote extensively about MVPs and the creation of this company.

January 2015 - September 2015

Consulting

Starbucks

"Innovation and New Projects" Consultant

Worked on three projects within Starbucks' Digital Customer Experiences and Urban Markets teams to concept, research, develop, pilot, and test new programs, products, and initiatives.

Cannot share specific details publicly, but at a high level, projects have included work in supply chain logistics, new store concepts, and improvements to the Starbucks mobile and web app to facilitate customer preferences and experiences. Frequently apply techniques from human centered design, lean startup, customer development, liberating structures, and agile. Work with large, cross-functional teams and 1 on 1 with a dedicated partner.

April 2019 - April 2020

18F

The Federal Government

Joined 18F as federal employee for a 2 year term. Served as an Innovation Specialist, Project Manager, Product Manager, Acting Director of Strategy, and Chief of Staff to the Director of Procurement. Major projects:

  • Helped the Environmental Protection Agency save $200 million dollars while developing and delivering a minimum viable product for the e-Manifest program.
  • Advised C-suite leadership at the Census Bureau on strategy for the technical build out for the front end of the 2020 Census.
  • Worked with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Mississippi's Department of Child Protective Services to replace Mississippi's aging child welfare case management system. Steered Misssippi toward a modular procurement strategy and jumpstarted the project, which had been stalled for over a decade.
June 2015 - June 2017

Wonful Consulting

Founder

Founded Wonful Consulting to teach the clients modern practices of working together and connecting with their customers. We taught and employed practices from Lean Startup, Agile, Customer Development, Design Thinking, and Liberating Structures. Worked with state governments and startup accelerators through a combination of workshops and on-going embedded engagements.

Government clients include:

  • Washington Office of the Chief Information Officer
  • Washington Department of Retirement Systems
  • Results Washington
  • Tacoma-Pierce County Department of Health

Accelerators and Bootcamps:

  • TechStars
  • 9 Mile Labs
  • General Assembly
April 2014 - Present

LIFFFT

Partner

Worked with Nordstrom on various efforts in and around their Innovation Lab. Signed a lot of NDAs about the work we did.

Jan 2013 - Feb 2014

Community

Ignite Seattle

Organizer

Ignite Seattle: 14 speakers get five minutes on stage with 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds... with or without them. Enlighten us, but make it quick! After 35 events over 12 years, we regularly sell out our shows at Town Hall and The Egyptian Theatre.

Organizer responsibilities include recruiting and choosing speakers, speaker coaching, collecting and ensuring compliance of slide decks, and managing the presentations the night of the event.

June 2010 - Present

Parkour Visions

Vice Chair, Member of the Board

Parkour Visions is a women lead 501(c)3 non-profit organization committed to sharing the benefits of parkour and natural movement with all ages through educational programming, design, and community development.

We hold general classes at our facility and in public places throughout the city, run special programs to create an inclusive environment for women, children, and those with silver hair, and are building outreach programs for homeless and at-risk youth.

June 2010 - January 2021

Hacker News Seattle Meetup

Founder

The largest generalist monthly tech meetup in Seattle at the time. Maxed out 200 person capacity at most events. Provided high quality (non-pizza) food, beer, and networking opportunities at startup and tech company offices around Seattle.

Featured a wide range of speakers, from Justin Kan talking about YCombinator and Justin.tv to Chris Lewicki talking about asteroid mining.

August 2011 - October 2013

Everything Else

Public Speaking
Physical Activities
Other things
Other hobbies and interests