Thirteen years in tech and SaaS, most of it inside a four-person team building a funnel-based checkout platform for SMEs and entrepreneurs that now processes well over a billion dollars in GMV a year. I joined as a founding member and moved from the support side of that product into owning it.
The through line is proximity to the customer. I ran a support desk serving tens of thousands of users at above 95% CSAT with a team of two, built the public knowledge base from nothing in both written and video form, and was the public face of the company across a Facebook group of more than ten thousand members. That volume of direct contact is where my product judgement comes from.
Alongside that I have built and run two businesses of my own, including a marketplace I launched, sold, repurchased and relaunched. I communicate clearly, avoid corporate fluff, and work best in teams that need one person to cover ground that would normally take three.
Product roles with SMEs and startups that value motivated, adaptive and knowledgeable staff. Remote, on blended NZ and US hours. I keep New Zealand working hours and my morning is the US afternoon, so standups and reviews land in the overlap and the rest of the day runs while the US sleeps. Work hands over in both directions rather than waiting a day for a reply. I have already done this for three and a half years with an Austin, Texas company, working day to day with colleagues across the US and Canada, so the same overlap served every North American timezone.
I engage as a contractor, so there is no visa or sponsorship involved. Contract directly, or through Deel or whichever platform you already use. W-8BEN ready, and USD invoicing paid by ACH.
Built a free classifieds marketplace for the New Zealand airsoft community after a Facebook policy change in 2016 left it with no safe place to trade. Grew it to more than 100,000 page views a month. This was my first product management work in practice, if not in title: the research, scoping, UX, UI and testing were mine, and I contracted out the development.
A local hobby store needed to move off VendCommerce, which was shutting down. The owner chose BigCommerce on VendCommerce’s recommendation, largely because it handled the integrations with their existing in-store accounting and POS systems natively. I facilitated the move.
A niche eCommerce business selling coloured smoke grenades, originally aimed at the paintball and airsoft communities. Significant growth came from an unexpected segment: wedding and gender-reveal photographers, who became a large part of the customer base. Grew month on month at an average 40% profit margin, and ceased trading when local regulation changed.
A SaaS platform that made podcast creation and distribution simple at a time when the know-how was gatekept by consultants charging thousands. Owned support and content material for thousands of customers, identified support trends and built training against them, and produced the primary website sales video.
A video marketing platform offering lead capture inside the player, chaptering and interactive overlays years before those became standard. Owned support and training content for tens of thousands of customers, keeping a lean support team viable as the base grew. Involved in filming and producing the viral pre-launch that led to a seven-figure day-one launch.
Designed the product logo, recorded and edited the sales video, and built a training section inside the membership breaking down my own process for the viral pre-release video: thought process, storyboarding, editing technique, audio and effects sourcing, and a step-by-step walkthrough of the edit.
Contracted to produce the website sales video from a supplied script and voiceover. Storyboarding, graphics, animation and production, including multiple cuts for A/B split testing.
Built a course taking someone who had never recorded or edited audio to a level where they could produce professional-sounding podcast episodes using free tools, covering audio setups across a range of budgets.
dale@dalemiles.com
linkedin.com/in/dale-miles
Tauranga, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand