Why Blockchain Needs Product & Marketing

With the explosion of blockchain companies (plus arms of enterprises) and the buzzwords that come along with the technology, there is a tremendous need for great product and marketing minds within the space. Attend this meetup to hear from heads of product & marketing at top Bay Area blockchain companies about the nuances of staying customer-centric in this emerging space. We'll explore concepts like how to think through your personas when you have a combination of stakeholders, how to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences, and how to most effectively communicate your product message.

This meetup is for anyone in product & marketing looking to enter the Blockchain space, product managers & marketers already at blockchain companies looking to network and grow their skills, or blockchain companies looking to hire great product managers & marketers. Hope to see you all there!

PANELISTS:

Thierry Bonfante | Head of Product, uPort

Thierry has over 20 years of experience in enterprise and consumer software. He worked for several startups in France, Canada and the USA and drove 2 subsequent acquisitions by Oracle. Over the years, Thierry has played different roles at the executive level leading global teams in Product Management, Product Development, QA, Consulting, Customer Success and Presales. He was actively involved in defining the first interoperability standards for mobility and has helped several organizations, including Oracle, in their transition to the Cloud on the SaaS and PaaS fronts. Thierry is now Head of Product and co-lead at uPort to take an active role in the next major technological shift unleashed by Ethereum.

Willie Wang | VP of Product, Abra

Willie leads engineering and product teams at Abra. Prior to this he was the SVP of Engineering at eHealth where he was responsible for all aspects of Engineering and Product Development for eHealth (Engineering, QA, Deployment, Operations, Telephony Services).

He has held various leadership roles at BEA, Oracle, Codesion and CollabNet Inc. Willie has also founded and led Emergence software as its CEO (acquired by Codesion)

Brett Li | Product Marketing, ConsenSys

Brett is a lead product marketer at ConsenSys, supporting ConsenSys' enterprise business and spoke projects. He has 10+ years of experience in product marketing, product management, and solution architecture in b2b software companies. Prior to ConsenSys, Brett held leadership roles at Periscope Data and Capriza.

MODERATOR:

Elaine Zelby | Principal & Director of Growth, SignalFire

Elaine currently is a Prinpal & Director of Growth at SignalFire, an early-stage VC firm. Previously, she led Product Marketing for ConsenSys, a global formation of technologists and entrepreneurs building the infrastructure, applications, and practices that enable a decentralized world. Prior to that she led Enterprise Product Marketing for Slack and had spent 5 years as an early employee of an Andreessen Horowitz portfolio company helping build up the product and business functions. Elaine holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and while she has shifted into more of the software world, she still loves building things and exploring the intersection between software and hardware.