Jonathan Sandlund

Senior Product Manager, Growth

2025

Senior Product Manager, Learning

2024 - 2025

I led the Skill Proficiency Track for LinkedIn Learning Solutions ("LLS"), a global leader in the online learning market w/ 850M+ Learners. I was responsible for product strategy and execution across our suite of skill pro products and solutions, from standalone assessments to in-course exams and professional certificates. Partnered closely with product, PMM, and Content teams. * Pivoted our skill proficiency product strategy. Drove a hard, impactful, company-first decision to pivot our strategy away from standalone skill assessments towards a set of more trustworthy and valuable measurements of proficiency based on a mix of user, customer, and market data. This freed up resources to invest in higher-impact opportunities. * Led our FY25 retention growth strategy for LLS in collaboration with PMs, BizOps and DS. Built user lifecycle growth model; identified key gaps and opportunities within each segment through quant & qual research; and sized and prioritized opportunities to help shape LLS’s FY25 strategy and roadmap.

Sabbatical: Volunteering, Learning, Consulting

2023 - 2024

I carved out time to consult on passion projects, volunteer in new industries, and explore personal and professional curiosities. * Consulted w/ Raj Bhargava on creating an AI-augmented, self-guided version of his "Design Your Next Life Chapter" Stanford CS course, which I had the great pleasure of taking! It's in Beta and worth a try if you're considering a career change! https://www.yournextworkchapter.com * U.S. Digital Response PM fellowship: Helped develop new features to smooth and improve USDR's Federal Grant Finder tool: https://www.usdigitalresponse.org/grant/grant-finder * Full Circle Fund fellowship: Helped Edgewood Center for Children and Families create an internal knowledge base and process to scale the growth of their new "A Place to Begin" program: https://edgewood.org/a-place-to-begin/ * Explored curiosities across Religion, Philosophy, Leadership & Management, Programming, and AI through a mix of offline and online courses.

Senior Product Manager II

2022 - 2023

I led the Growth Acquisition Pod and Core Learning Experience Pods for 2.5 and 0.5 years, respectively. In deep partnership w/ teammates and stakeholders across Engineering, Design, User Research, Data Science, Marketing, Content Strategy, and Partnerships, I guided our Pod's long-term strategy, roadmap, and execution to drive TOF growth. * We helped grow Coursera from 70M => 120M+ Learners over 3 years by successfully launching and scaling new acquisition products, revamping critical signup and onboarding flows, and continuously optimizing our core shopping experiences. * Strategized, launched, and scaled a new career guidance content product in partnership with Marketing from 0 to 40M+ new visitors a year in under 2.5 years, generating $50M+ / yr in earned search value and helping re-position Coursera as the destination for career transformation. * Designed, led a high-velocity, data-driven CRO program that cumulatively delivered a 20%+ incremental statsig lift in our TOF growth over 2 years, generating an incremental ~4M new signups / year. * Launched Coursera’s first major Consumer AI product (“Coursera Coach”) into Beta in 4 months.

Senior Product Manager I, Growth

2020 - 2022

Coursera envisions a future where everyone has access to a world-class education. We aim to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.

Senior Product Manager, Head of Investing

2016 - 2019

* In a PM/GM role, led the cross-functional Investing team to grow traffic and organic revenue >4x to $XXM+ over 3 years. We became the largest U.S. marketplace for shopping online brokerage and investment advisory products and helped 15M+ consumers a year make smarter investment decisions. Responsible for product and business strategy, planning & roadmapping, and execution. * We grew our vertical's SEO market share from <10% to >60% in target markets over 3 years through relentlessly data-driven product and content innovation and performance management. We won #1-2 organic SERP ranks across nearly all of our priority audiences by building and continuously optimizing great investment advisory and guidance products. * Led a 5-member platform product team that, alongside two other platform teams and many cross-functional partners, envisioned, designed, built and migrated 150+ of NW's highest traffic and revenue products across multiple verticals to a shared "universal marketplace" platform. It supported >$200M+ in revenue, delivered a more consistent and delightful shopping experience to consumers, standardized product analytics and analyses, accelerated experimentation, and unlocked cross-team feature development. * Managed partnerships with major financial institutions (Merrill Lynch, TD Ameritrade, etc.) end-to-end, including pricing, forecasting, performance management. Negotiated higher pricing with top partners to achieve industry-leading CPAs. NerdWallet's marketplaces and advisory products help 150M+ consumers a year make smarter financial decisions.

Growth Lead

2014 - 2016

* Defined, led and executed user acquisition and activation strategies, helping grow CircleUp into one of the largest networks of verified accredited investors in the world (30,000+). * Scaled paid acquisition ~5x while reducing avg. CAC by 40% by continuously testing and optimizing new channels, messaging, and landing pages. * Launched and scaled first referral marketing channel by developing and growing adoption of products that helped entrepreneurs identify, engage and acquire investors in their networks. Used to acquire thousands of new investors and generate $5M+ in GMV. * Increased activation KPI (signup to deal room) by ~2x by successfully A/B testing and deploying improvements to the first-time user experience and onboarding email campaigns * Defined and executed the retail GTM strategy for CircleUp's first private equity index fund. Worked closely with product & compliance to develop and test the product's LP and digital marketing materials. Segmented and marketed users through a mix of targeted email campaigns and webinars to successfully raise $4M+. CircleUp is an online private equity marketplace that connects professional investors to innovative consumer companies. It's helped Consumer entrepreneurs raise more than $300M since 2012.

Founder

2012 - 2014

Bootstrapped TheCrowdCafe into the leading provider of data & research on the global investment crowdfunding industry. * (Naively) wore many hats, from coding and writing to SEO, public speaking, and sales. Eventually delegated some functions, but not soon enough. Lesson learned. * With a little skill and a lot of luck (timing), dominated SEO for all things "equity crowdfunding". Business model: free inbound leads on the front-end; generated revenue by selling proprietary data, research and site sponsorships on the back-end. * Aggregated, wrangled, analyzed and published industry data to promote greater understanding of the investment crowdfunding industry and its potential. (Unfortunately, unrealized.) Presented research at 15+ conferences over two years. * Ultimately consider TCC a failed venture. Operating as a solo founder for two years led to burn out. But well worth the cost of admission. I matured tremendously —professionally and personally—and it's undoubtedly made me a more effective operator. Adversity is a great teacher. * As part of my employment agreement with CircleUp, I stopped work on TCC. The domain has since been sniped by a content farm. Waybackmachine to the rescue, here's an archived snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20161029185121/http://www.thecrowdcafe.com/

Analyst

2011 - 2012

Capital placements, M&A and operations advisory for emerging growth companies. Sector-focused on retail and e-commerce. Selected transaction: Equity placement for $50M+ direct-to-consumer e-commerce company • Built transaction & operating models for client. Wrote scripts to ingest Google Analytics data into the operating model to automate the update of traffic, conversion rate and revenue forecasts by channel (Organic Search, Paid, Referral, Social, Direct, Email). • Prepared PPM, decks and management presentations. • Identified and communicated with key potential investors.

Intern, Micro-Cap Fund

2010 - 2010

A private equity pioneer in the micro-cap space; invests in North American companies with up to $5m in EBITDA. * Assisted fund analysts in due diligence of potential acquisitions * Completed competitive analysis of the B2B SaaS market

Equity Analyst

2010 - 2010

•Completed fundamental research on small-cap equities and high-yield debt - Bloomberg certified; used to build equity screens and run portfolio regressions - Built DCF and trading comp. models •Distilled analyses into internal and external (client-friendly) equity reports