Product leader
Mike Simpson
Senior product operator with 10+ years building marketplace, SaaS, and AI-enabled platforms. Deep growth, analytics, and technical execution experience. Comfortable translating between executives and engineering.
Background
Built around shipping software.
Mike started his career at Apple, where he spent nearly seven years working directly with businesses and customers on digital strategy — across website development, design, and training. Hands-on work that built the foundation most product managers skip: understanding how technology and people actually connect.
He moved through Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Interactive on the ad operations side, then hit the inflection point at The Venue Report — joining as a founding-team member and becoming Operations Director for a venture-backed travel marketplace. He led product, platform, search, recommendation surfaces, content systems, and analytics. The acquisition system was one part of the platform, not a separate function. Monthly organic traffic scaled from 5,000 to multi-million; 12 acquisition channels ran inside one integrated system.
Since founding Variant Media in 2019, Mike has run a fractional product and growth practice. Engagements include Marble (fractional CPO, B2B SaaS with AI workflows), DiligensHub (M&A dataroom software), Design Guide (CEU software), GetAssigned (CRM software), Go Private Golf (private golf travel platform), My GI Health (medical software), and clinical-trial workflow software with research teams at Michigan, Cedars-Sinai, and Northwestern.
The throughline: a senior product operator who can set strategy, write a spec engineers can build from, instrument it, and own the growth loop around it. Comfortable inside larger organizations. Equally comfortable taking a 0→1 platform from whiteboard to production.
B.S. in Organizational Leadership — Chapman University.
Why It Matters
The background behind the work.
Most product managers come from one of three backgrounds: business, engineering, or design. Mike has operated seriously across all three over two decades — which means he can move between strategy, spec, and shipped artifact without a handoff.
The product-management lens means he thinks in systems and platforms, not features. The engineering and design background means he can write a spec, build a prototype, and review architecture trade-offs with the team that has to live with them. The growth and analytics background means he ships product decisions tied to measurable outcomes — not opinion.
For travel, marketplace, AI, and B2B SaaS companies — where the product surface, the buyer, and the operational reality all interact — that combination is rare.
Direct engagement is the norm: Mike is the operator on every project. Not a team lead who delegates. Not an account manager who passes information between you and the people doing the work.
Career
Experience.
Variant Media Inc.
Founder & Principal Product Operator
July 2019 — Present
Fractional CPO at Marble — B2B SaaS with AI workflows; owned roadmap, platform decisions, and cross-functional shipping.
Product leadership across DiligensHub (M&A dataroom), Design Guide (CEU software), GetAssigned (CRM), and Go Private Golf (private golf travel platform).
Built clinical-trial workflow software and recruitment systems with research teams at the University of Michigan, Cedars-Sinai, and Northwestern.
Designed and shipped AI integrations, search and recommendation surfaces, and platform instrumentation across 30+ engagements.
Governed $5M+ in acquisition spend with attribution, channel mix, and measurement experience that feeds back into product decisions.
The Venue Report
Operations Director
May 2015 — July 2019
Founding team member at a venture-backed travel marketplace.
Led product, platform, search, content, and analytics for a 20+ person team.
Owned the acquisition system as part of an integrated platform — 12 channels, $1M+ annual spend.
Grew monthly organic traffic from 5,000 to multi-million via product, content, and search architecture work.
Drove 20% average month-over-month growth across core business KPIs.
CBS Interactive
Traffic Manager
Nov. 2014 — May 2015
Owned publisher-side ad operations across all CBS Sports properties and affiliates.
Maintained a near-zero error rate through process design and quality assurance.
Used HTML, CSS, and JS to identify more impactful ways to serve impressions.
Clear Channel Outdoor
Photography Manager
Feb. 2013 — Nov. 2014
Hired, trained, and managed 7 photographers to document CCO's Southern California inventory.
Built and maintained a database of 500,000+ photos and videos used across sales and marketing systems.
Worked closely with the Marketing Manager and VP of Sales to identify and act on opportunities.
Apple Inc.
Creative
Oct. 2006 — Feb. 2013
Helped customers and businesses achieve digital goals through Apple's training services.
Operated across 10+ industries including web development, design, and digital strategy.
Acted as corporate trainer for businesses to identify and execute their digital strategy.
Capabilities
Skills & Disciplines.
Product Management & Strategy
Roadmap, prioritization, spec writing, cross-functional leadership, and the cadence to ship the right thing on the right timeline.
Platform & Marketplace Systems
Search, recommendations, marketplace mechanics, and the supply/demand instrumentation that tells you whether the platform is actually working.
AI-Enabled Product Development
LLM integration, workflow automation, AI-native UX patterns, and the product judgment to know when AI is the answer and when it isn't.
Technical Product Execution
Architecture trade-offs, prototyping, vendor evaluation, and the engineering collaboration to translate strategy into shipped software.
Growth, Analytics & Attribution
Acquisition systems, instrumentation, attribution, and measurement — feeding signal back into product decisions, not running as a separate function.
Design & Front-End Development
UI/UX design, design-system collaboration, and hands-on HTML/CSS/JS when prototyping is faster than specifying.
Peer-Reviewed Research
Contributions & Publications.
Mike's product work in health-tech extends into academic research. He has contributed to peer-reviewed publications on social media-driven health education — collaborations with medical research teams at Michigan, Cedars-Sinai, and Northwestern on the workflow software and recruitment systems behind their studies.
He also contributed to product and growth initiatives at Within Unlimited (creator of Supernatural), which was subsequently acquired by Meta Platforms following FTC review.
Crohns Colitis 360 · 2025
Simpson M, et al.
“Leveraging Social Media for Health Education: Dissemination of Crohn's Perianal Fistula Educational Videos via Facebook and Instagram.”
American Journal of Gastroenterology · 2022
Simpson M, et al.
“Social Media for the Dissemination of Educational Videos About Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.”
Work with Mike
Let's see if there's a fit.
Variant Media takes on a small number of engagements at a time — fractional product leadership, 0→1 platform builds, and product/growth systems work. Tell Mike about the product and where it's stuck.