My first official product management role was as director and head of product for Red Hat Marketplace. At the time it was viewed as a key part of the growth strategy behind IBM's $34B acquisition of Red Hat, so getting the role was a big vote of confidence. I led the team through planning, launch, and growth experiments.

I led customer development and roadmap, working with sales, marketing, research, design, engineering, legal, and finance. Aligning people was especially delicate because there were both Red hat and IBM management chains scrutinizing everything. Our COO Mike told me I ran the best product management operation he'd ever seen.

The public launch was covered in 30+ tech publications. Coverage in The New Stack quoted me extensively on the customer benefits:

Red Hat Launches an OpenShift-Based Marketplace to Aid Multicloud Portability
Red Hat’s Marketplace has opened for business, allowing organizations a wide choice range of vetted software and platform choices for multicloud environments.
The New StackB. Cameron Gain

The marketplace enabled customers to buy server software (Kubernetes Operators) with pay-as-you go metering and billing, supplied by IBM and partners. Unfortunately, it didn't survive the challenges of standing up a two-sided marketplace. We weren't able to aggregate customer demand, so partners were hesitant to join. I tried to raise this concern up the management chain for help but was unsuccessful in doing so.

The experience used Carbon Design System and won design awards from Webby, European Product Design, Indigo, W3, and a Stratus cloud computing award. If interested, see the case study by Argodesign which includes a quote from our first line design manager Colin. I was mostly hands-off as the design team was competent on their own under Charlie and Robert, but on customer research I worked closely with Eleanor and highly recommend her.

Many of the capabilities were preserved elsewhere in the IBM software portfolio today thanks to Robert.

Scrapbook

Pre-launch (beta period) tweet: