Alex Wykoff
Product Manager
Hi! If we haven't met before, here's a little about me. I'm originally from Pennsylvania, but now spend most of my time in Austin, TX. I've lived and studied in South Korea. Every now and then I like to do extended stays in China and Germany as well.
My product philosophy is that the most successful products are derived from observing and listening to users while applying a design-with strategy. I have taken products from concept to launch while maintaining industry-leading standards of privacy and security.
I have been very lucky to work with some amazing people during my career. I'm currently looking for a new role and an opportunity to keep growing while bringing delight to users.
Let's get in touch!
What I've Shipped
Brave Rewards
I drove the research and insights for Brave Ads, a program which now runs in every non-embargoed country on Earth and rewards users for participating in privacy preserving ads. I also launched the referral rate-card program which saved millions in operational cost while maintaining user growth.
Brave
I specified and launched the web compatibility reporter, a critical mechanism for improving user satisfaction. I also created community.brave.com and grew it to over 500,000 monthly views during my administration.
Distributed Camp
I created a 3 day virtual event with speakers, workshops, and participant unconference. It highlighted technologies driving the future of the Internet including IPFS, Beaker Browser / Hypercore Protocol, WebTorrent, and I2P.
Recommendations
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Mandar Shinde - VP of Product - Brave
Alex reported to me directly at Brave. Alex was the product manager for a variety of products within the Brave Rewards ecosystem. Alex is a dear friend. Alex comes from a quality and UX research background that gives him ample understanding of how to think, build, measure, and kill ideas and product concepts. Alex is fast to think, fast to adapt, and put weight behind early success of ideas if they sustain. He was instrumental in building our rate card changes globally for a multi-million dollar program that saved Brave upwards of $2M within a quarter. He also was the primary driver of building the peer-to-peer referral program on the browser allowing WOM users to earn to refer folks; all of this in a privacy preserving way. In general, Alex' understanding of technical views, research gathering, data analytics, quality thinking, consumer feel, visualization, security, product management cycles, and foundational management are solid. I would recommend Alex very strongly and am available to vouch for his abilities.
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Jason Sadler - Senior Software Engineer
Alex is an excellent product manager. He is able to get the right answers to the right questions. He is able to gather requirements efficiently and makes an engineer's work much easier. He is able to appropriately give feedback and is also able to absorb feedback to shape a product effectively. It was great working with him on Brave Rewards!
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Garvan Keely - iOS Tech Lead - Mozilla
Working with Alex while at Brave Software was great. He is the perfect person to be working with among the chaos of a startup. He is a consistently good communicator, a level-headed thinker, and has a clarity of product vision that helps keep the team on-track to success.
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Molly Thurin - Software Engineer - uStudio
Alex is a thoughtful, organized, and passionate leader. He was able to completely change the philosophy of development and quality on our team to help us build better projects in less time. He is a great communicator and was able to break down complex and ambiguous projects into clear tasks and is always super cool under fire.
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Okami Stormborn - Operations Manager - Brave
Alex is a complete joy to work with, and would be an uplifting addition to any team. I worked with Alex both directly and indirectly at Brave Software. He is fantastic at boosting and maintaining team morale, and he always put his heart and soul into every project I saw him work on. Alex is an effective communicator, a passionate leader, an all around thoughtful person, and it was always a delight to work on projects with him.