Product Leader · B2B SaaS & AI

Exec-Level Strategy. Builder-Level Execution.

I create products that drive revenue — AI features in production, 200%+ ARR growth in consecutive years, and scaled the flagship product from $20K to multi-million. After six years as founding PM and SVP at a venture-backed AI SaaS company, I'm ready to go deep on hard problems as a senior IC PM at a company that's serious about building something that matters.

→ Led Product from Pre-Seed to Series A → 10+ Years B2B SaaS → Multiple AI Features Shipped → 200%+ ARR Growth in Consecutive Years → Tech 25 Award → Orr Fellowship Alumni → Supra Member

The Uncommon Profile

I've set the strategy. Then shipped the product.

For the past six years, I was the head of product at a venture-backed AI SaaS company. That meant I wasn't just writing PRDs. Sitting at the executive table helped me shape company-level bets, and ultimately translate that strategy into the actionable details that make products ship successfully.

At the Executive Level

Multi-year product vision & strategy

At the Product Level

Customer discovery interviews

VC pitches & board presentations

Feature definition and design collaboration

OKR & roadmap alignment

Product analytics configuration and analysis

Product org & team building

PRDs, user stories, prioritization

Outcomes Driven

200%+ ARR Growth
consecutive years

600%+ ACV
expansion

4 AI Modules
Shipped

60+ Integrations
launched

Success Stories

Real stories. Real outcomes.

Elate · SVP Product · 2026

Plan Analyzer — Turn Static Docs into Strategic Direction

Strategic plans live in PowerPoints and spreadsheets, and Strategy Leaders needed a way to accelerate moving those into Elate.

→ Reduction in migration time and accelerated upsell velocity

Elate · SVP Product · 2025

Strategy Advisor — Turning AI into a Revenue Line

Strategy Advisor is the AI layer powering Elate that gives strategy leaders functionality that meets how they actually work.

→ Two highest upsell quarters in company history

Elate · VP Product · 2023

Reporting Module — Align Product Usage to Meeting Cadence

30+ customer interviews uncovered a pain Strategy Leaders have with current reporting processes. We shipped a module to meet them how they already work.

→ Increased NRR and 3-month admin retention

Elate · Founding PM · 2020–2026

0 to 1 Founding PM — Find Product Market Fit

Joined at $20K ARR and <10 customers. With no product function, no analytics baseline, no standard delivery process, and no roadmap, my job was to create and deliver a differentiated product strategy, while building the product org and processes.

→ 100+ customers · multi-million ARR · 200%+ growth consecutive years

The Problem

AI was everywhere, but most B2B SaaS companies were bolting on ChatGPT wrappers and calling it a feature. Elate's customers — strategy and operations leaders — needed something that fit into how they actually worked, not a chatbot in the corner of the UI.

What I Did

I led the product strategy, discovery, and launch of Strategy Advisor — Elate's first standalone AI product, built on Gemini LLMs integrated into core platform workflows. I defined the use cases, designed the interaction model, partnered with engineering on the LLM architecture, and drove GTM alignment on packaging and pricing.

The Outcome

Strategy Advisor drove two of the highest upsell quarters in the company's history, validating AI as a legitimate, monetizable product layer — not just a marketing checkbox.

AI features generate revenue when they're designed around workflow, not around capability. The technical lift was secondary to the product thinking.

↑ Close

The Problem

One of the biggest friction points in Elate's sales cycle was migration. Prospects had strategic plans living in PowerPoints, spreadsheets, and docs — and the work of moving that into Elate was slowing deals and adding implementation cost.

What I Did

I designed and launched Plan Analyzer, an AI feature using structured input parsing and LLM evaluation to analyze a customer's existing strategic plan and map it into Elate's framework. I drove it from discovery through launch — defining the parsing logic, evaluation rubric, and output UX.

The Outcome

Plan Analyzer reduced customer migration time by 40% and directly accelerated upsell velocity. It became a live demo tool in the sales process — something I didn't anticipate but designed toward by keeping the experience clean and fast.

The best AI features solve a problem that exists before the customer even logs in. Reducing time-to-value is a product problem — AI just happened to be the right tool.

↑ Close

The Problem

Elate had strong adoption in plan creation, but customers were leaving the platform to report on progress — going back to slides and spreadsheets for leadership meetings. Lower stickiness, fewer expansion opportunities, a product that only owned half the workflow.

What I Did

I ran 30+ structured customer interviews to understand how strategy leaders actually ran their review meetings. From that, I defined and launched a core reporting module that let customers build, schedule, and share reports without leaving the platform.

The Outcome

The module drove greater than 100% NRR in 2022, primarily by creating a new surface for CS-led upsell conversations. Admin 3-month retention hit 51% — 19 points above the Pendo benchmark.

Customer interviews are only valuable if you're asking the right questions. I wasn't looking for feature requests — I was mapping the workflow gaps that were costing us retention.

↑ Close

The Problem

When I joined Elate in January 2020, there was no product function, no analytics baseline, no delivery process, and no clear roadmap. Fewer than 10 customers and $20K in ARR. My job was to build all of it.

What I Did

I built the product org from scratch: established product analytics in Pendo, defined activation and retention metrics, implemented agile delivery, led the core platform redesign, and grew into managing product, design, and eventually engineering.

The Outcome

By Series A: 100+ customers, multi-million ARR, 200%+ ARR growth in consecutive years, 600%+ ACV expansion. The product went from a $20K ARR startup to a differentiated platform competing for enterprise deals.

0→1 isn't about shipping fast. It's about building the right foundations — process, metrics, and product intuition — so that when you have product-market fit, you can actually scale it.

↑ Close

Experience

The Path Here

2024 – 2026

SVP of Product

Elate

Led AI product suite that drove the company's highest upsell quarters. Unified Product, Design, and Engineering into a single department following the Head of Engineering's departure.

2022 – 2024

VP of Product

Elate

Shipped reporting module that significantly increased NRR. Hired our first product manager and product designer to grow the department. Led collaboration feature expansion resulting in increased engagement for every major product metric.

2020 – 2022

Director of Product — Founding PM

Elate · Employee #5

Built the product function from scratch. Owned roadmap, discovery, PRDs, prioritization, delivery, and cross-functional alignment systems from day one. Heavily involved in leading marketing and brand, shaping strategy, and other functions we didn't have full-time roles for at that stage.

2017 – 2019

Senior Product Manager & Product Manager

Innovatemap

Consulted across 10+ clients — early-stage startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. Took a healthtech startup from concept to shipped MVP and first customer. Led a 20+ person cross-functional team at a Fortune 500 company through a full UX overhaul: customer research, design, market positioning, and roadmap sequencing.

2015 – 2017

Product Owner

PSI Talent Measurement

Led strategic sunset of a $5M+ ARR acquired product suite to create a significant reduction in infrastructure spend and support hours. Improved team delivery speed and efficiency by implementing agile processes.

Education

M.S. Human-Computer Interaction

Indiana University Indianapolis

B.S. Business (Marketing), Minor in Psychology

Indiana University — Kelley School of Business

Recognition

A Few Highlights

🏆

Tech 25 Award

Recognized by TechPoint as one of Indiana's top 25 tech professionals. Nominated by CEO Brooks Busch.

Read the feature →

🔒

Supra Member

Member of an invite-only network focused on connecting, supporting, and growing Product leaders.

Learn more →

✍️

Published on Mind the Product

Wrote for one of the world's largest product management communities with 170k+ subscribers.

Read the article →

🚀

Elate Series A

Part of the early team that scaled from $20K ARR and <10 customers to Series A and 100+ customers.

Read the announcement →

Contact

Let's Talk

Or connect on LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/philtarnowski

AI Product Leader · Modules in Production

Studied the Patterns. Shipped the Products.

I've led teams that shipped four AI modules to production using Gemini LLMs — features that drove two of the company's highest upsell quarters and turned AI into a standalone revenue layer. Now I'm going deeper: building personal AI projects, studying agentic design patterns, and developing the fluency to do it again at the next company.

→ 4 AI Modules in Production → 2 Highest Upsell Quarters in Company History → Gemini LLMs · Agentic Design Patterns · Prompt Engineering

AI Success Stories

AI Modules in Production

01 — Flagship AI Product

Strategy Advisor

Elate's flagship AI product, built on Gemini LLMs and integrated into core strategy workflows. I led the overall product vision, solution definition, and cross-functional collaboration to activate it. Validated AI as a standalone monetizable layer — not just a feature.

→ Two highest upsell quarters in company history

02 — Sales Accelerator

Plan Analyzer

AI feature using structured input parsing and LLM evaluation to analyze a customer's existing strategic plan documents (PPTs, Docs, CSVs, PDFs.). After analysis, the plan was translated into a strategic planning framework and imported into the product.

→ Reduction in migration time and accelerated upsell velocity

03 — Early Warning System

Risk Navigator

An early warning system that scans across teams, timelines, and outcomes to catch risks before they spiral. We scoped a Risk Score, blending a combination of data in Elate with comment sentiment analysis to help customers understand the severity of risks in their organization.

→ Increased Stickiness at a User and Account Level

04 — Reporting Engine

Reporting Assistant

An AI reporting tool that transforms updates, risks, and outcomes into clear, audience-ready reports in minutes. AI generation of the report helped speed up time to value to drive adoption of the platform.

→ Increased NRR and 3-month admin retention

AI Strategy

How I Think About AI

This Moment is the Opportunity

Generative AI and the pace of innovation over the past few years has fundamentally changed how we use products, build solutions, and run companies. The companies and people who adapt and innovate now will define the next decade. Standing still isn't a neutral choice.

AI Should Solve a Customer Problem — Not Just Apply AI to a Solution

It's easy to bolt an LLM onto a product and call it an AI feature. What's harder — and what actually works — is starting with a real customer problem, understanding the domain deeply, and asking whether AI is genuinely the right tool. The fundamentals of product still apply: know your users, know the market, and build things people will pay for. AI doesn't change that. It just raises the stakes for getting it right.

The Best Way to Learn AI Is to Use It

Reading about LLMs and taking courses builds the foundation. But fluency comes from building. I actively use these tools — Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cowork — to learn design patterns firsthand, understand how the tools actually behave, and develop intuition for what customers will expect from AI-powered products. Every project I build teaches me something I couldn't have learned in a course.

Personal AI Projects

What I'm Building with AI

The best way to understand how AI tools work — and what customers will expect from them — is to build with them yourself. These are projects built outside of work to deepen fluency with agentic tools, LLM workflows, and AI-native product patterns.

● Live

Financial Brief

Created a Claude-powered tool that generates a monthly structured financial summary brief. Built this to analyze my own finances, in addition to exploring how LLMs can transform raw data inputs into clean, decision-ready outputs — and to understand the design patterns behind AI-generated documents.

● Live

Weekly Calendar Digest

Created a Claude skill that pulls together a weekly calendar summary that highlights possible conflicts for multiple people. Built to understand how Claude skills work, how to design useful agentic outputs, and how AI can reduce the cognitive overhead of weekly planning.

● Live

This Portfolio Site

Built end-to-end using a Claude project with my LinkedIn profile and resume as context and Claude. A real-world test of AI-assisted product development — from content drafting to code generation to deployment.

◌ In Progress

More Coming

Actively exploring Claude Projects, Artifacts, Cowork, and Claude Code. Projects are added here as they're completed. All builds are meant for AI learning, but also should solve a real problem and be useful.

Education & Credentials

The Learning Behind the Work

Shipping AI products taught me what I didn't know. These courses are how I've been closing those gaps — with a deliberate focus on agent design, LLM evaluation, and the data foundations that make AI products reliable.

Anthropic

DeepLearning.AI

DataCamp

Udemy

Product Management for AI & Data Science

Podcasts & Content