Jamie Costello
Director of Product at Ratehub
Hello and welcome! Explore my background in product development, delve into my career, and let's connect.
View ResumeAbout Jamie - Product Leader with track record of data-driven growth
Hello! I’m Jamie, a Toronto based Product Leader with over a decade of experience in B2C SaaS & a proven track record of success in building and scaling products & 0-1 launches.
As a leader, I have 3 years reporting directly to CEO/Co-Founder of Ratehub, heading the product team of a the largest financial comparison platform in Canada with 1 million monthly visitors, and 6 years of overall experience managing and mentoring high-performing teams.
I've led teams launching lean MVPs, to guiding products through growth phases right through to managing established market leaders. Innovation, continuous experimentation, and the pursuit of growth are always at the heart of anything I do. My leadership philosophy is anchored in the success of my team; I thrive when they do. I cultivate a culture of mentorship and a clear, unified vision in order to empower my team to tackle real user problems with data-driven, scientific methods.
On a personal note, I'm fascinated by the emergence of transformative technologies, particularly AI and LLM. I've applied these tools to innovate within the workplace and, outside, spent a large amount of my own time learning and gaining hands on experience with self hosting models, implementing RAG solutions and playing around with all the open source tools available (Mixtral, LangChain, Ollama etc)
Professional Experience
Director of Product
Ratehub.ca
Oct 2021 - Present
Head of product, responsible for setting the product vision of Canada's largest financial comparison platform and helping set the overall company strategy as part of the executive leadership team. Recently leading breakout teams integrating generative AI projects for internal and external tools.
Leadership & Mentorship- Managed a product team of 5 PMs and one head of design (With two designers under her).
- Established an Associate Product Management program, providing the onboarding strategy and one on one coaching to allow them to succeed - mentoring all three APMs into full time PM roles with one moving to a Senior PM position.
- Launched our first API-driven "hosted application" for various small credit card partners, nearly tripling their revenue by hosting their credit card applications on our site. The results demonstrated have allowed us to begin onboarding major banks for similar initiatives
- Implemented a strategy of lean launches and scaling up when we prove we can generate users to launch several new verticals (Stock trading, robo advisors, crypto, motorcycle insurance, condo insurance & others), generating additional revenue without scaling up any teams.
- Led a swift SEO strategy pivot in collaboration with content and marketing teams. Enhanced landing pages by focusing on metrics like bounce rate and time on site, reclaiming the #1 SEO position and recovering lost organic traffic.
- Championed a data-obsessed, outcomes based approach to product development, utilizing customer feedback, research, A/B testing & willingness to pivot alongside analytics tools (Heap, GA, Looker) to ensure alignment with user needs and business goals.
- Set company roadmap for AI initiatives, focusing on internal efficiency and cost reduction by targeting documentation, translation, scrapers, research, administration & SEO.
Senior Product Manager, Everyday Banking, MoneySense & Frontend Infrastructure
Ratehub.ca
Aug 2018 - Oct 2021
Joined as PM and moved to a Senior PM position in 2020. Managed various scrum teams (Engineering, QA, design, analytics), responsible for defining the outcomes and metrics that would help us drive revenue & the roadmaps to get us there, primarily focusing on our credit cards business.
Growth Focused Product Strategy:- Launched a brand new eligibility checker product for credit cards, achieving a 3x lift in revenue per conversion by focusing on approval predictors. Based on MVP feedback, pivoted the project's initial focus of personalization to enhancing user approval confidence, substantially increasing engagement and revenue impact.
- After Ratehub's acquisition of Moneysense, integrated their platform to drive their users into our optimized conversion journeys, which doubled credit card audience & revenue.
- Utilized quantitative (GA, Heap) and qualitative insights (user testing) to identify and address key user pain points, growing our credit card business and over 3x'ing revenue in 3 years.
- Led the complete rebuild and rebrand of ratehub.ca using a new React-based infrastructure, improving key SEO and conversion metrics.
- Implemented a new custom CMS for content editors, enhancing content management efficiency and website performance.
Account Security & Loss Prevention Manager
Tucows
Jan 2016 - Aug 2018
Promoted to lead a fraud prevention team across all major Tucows brands (Ting, Enom, Hover & OpenSRS), I was responsible for developing and implementing comprehensive security strategies while staying hands-on with operational tasks.
- Hover Security Overhaul: Implemented a new security system for the Hover brand, slashing chargebacks by 75% within six months.
- Enom Security Integration: Rapidly assumed control of Enom's (Joint second largest domain reseller globally) security and anti-fraud processes post-acquisition, researching and implementing a third-party tool and automating a significant portion of order screening within two weeks.
- Brand-Specific Solutions: Developed tailored security enhancements for each brand, integrating building on internal systems and launching third-party tools like Kount, Siftscience, & Cybersource to address distinct security challenges.
Fraud Prevention & Orders Specialist
Tucows
Oct 2013 - Jan 2016
Starting as a Customer Service Representative and quickly moving to a fraud prevention role for Ting, I contributed to the brand's growth while significantly reducing fraud-related losses.
- Anti-Fraud System Implementation: Designed and executed a new anti-fraud system that decreased monthly revenue loss by over 50% and virtually eliminated chargebacks on retail purchases.
- Cross-Departmental Collaboration: Partnered with Support, Product Management, Marketing, and Development teams to create processes that minimized liability and enhanced customer experience, such as payment extension handling.
- Lead Investigator: Took the lead on all investigations related to potential malicious activities, including recovering approximately $65,000 in misused credits during a promotional period.
- Growing the business: during a period of extreme growth, wore many other hats - including coordinating with our new warehouse to implement an RMA system as we launched our own phone shipments to creating an internal tool to quickly check the validity of serial numbers on potential new stock purchases.
External Mentoring
Toronto Product Management Association
- Taking part in the TPMA mentorship program, providing one on one coaching and mentorship via zoom and in person
Youth Employment Services
- Worked with fellow Ratehub employees to regularly teach a financial literacy course and provided some one-on-one career guidance for their members.
Let's chat
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About the making of this website
This website was both coded and designed entirely using ChatGPT & it's been a fun pet project to see what it's capable of.
While it's produced something functional, as you can see product designers and frontend developers probably don't need to find a new line of work just yet!
If anyone is curious about the making of the site, don't hesitate to contact me! I'd be happy to share my experience and discuss the potential of AI in web design and development.