My Role.

In my earlier role as Director of Product, I was the product owner on the Ghostery extension for over 5 years, including major redesigns of the product (Ghostery 6, 7, and 8).  As Head of Product, I oversaw the product team that continued working on Ghostery the past 3 years.

Our Objectives.

The primary objective with Ghostery was to continue innovating the core technology while making the user experience simpler and more intuitive.  This product was also the lynchpin of our entire company, so it was critical that was used it to build our business.

Chiefly, our objectives were:

• Make an powerful privacy product that was also incredibly easy to use. 

• Maintain 4+ star user ratings on the major browsers.

• Grow the free user base

• Launch new subscription business model.

Challenges.

There are many challenges inherent to building a free privacy product for millions of users across the world.  These include:

Adapting to the everchanging world of browser extensions, particularly the technical constraints on Chrome

• Localizing the product into 13 international languages

• Building a privacy product with bespoke telemetry that put user privacy first

• Building a premium subscription model on top of a product that offered a lot for free already

Key Results.

I can proudly say we built a product whose impact was captured by several key results:

• 7M users across the world

• 1M free account holders

• 4.2 rating on Chrome

• 4.4 rating on Firefox

• SXSX Innovation Award in Privacy & Security (2018)

Recent Contributors.

• Teresa Lan (Product Manager)

• Vincent Lai (Senior Dr of Product Design)

• Chris Tino (SVP of Engineering & Technology)

• Jose Signanini (Director of Engineering)

• Caleb Richelson (Software Engineer)

• Serge Zarembensky (Software Engineer)

• Ilya Zarembesnky (Lead Engineer)

• Ben Strumeyer (Software Engineer)

• Leury Rodriguez (Software Engineer)

• Aziz Aithsaine (QA)

• Zach Marco (Program Manager)