Hi, I’m David Jacobs

I'm a Product Manager at Microsoft—previously PM at Hired and Founding Engineer at Minerva Schools.

My favorite work has been architecting Minerva’s Active Learning Forum and driving revenue at Hired through its Search product.

Profile – Circular

I'm obsessed with learning about my customers—how else can you solve a person's problem?

Beta Distribution

My favorite ways to learn what they need?

  1. Talk to them! Both directly and through user research.
  2. Analysis—don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and deeply understand your data.
  3. Figure out ways of overcoming your own biases—they get in between you and creating a great product. Confirmation bias, the availability heuristic & cultural biases are all good ones to fight.

I grew up bilingual, which taught me how to bridge the gap between problem and solution…

'Idea' and 'execution' are different languages, and when they're split up, they aren't enough.

1. Ideas don’t have mass

2. Execution doesn’t have direction

3. When you work in boxes, the best you can hope to build is a stack of boxes

Cube

… because it turns out that the toughest problems—they're won in translation.

Minerva Active Learning Forum

So I never stop practicing my favorite languages:

  • UX, statistics, and the way they go together
  • Business metrics & KPIs
  • Deep technical know-how
  • French, Spanish & light Croatian

Want to find out more?

I'm @davetypes on Twitter