CHRIS MAKARSKY
Product Leader
SF · LA | chris@makarsky.com | linkedin.com/in/makarsky

Building high-impact SaaS and consumer products by pairing curiosity with rigor.

SUMMARY
Product executive with 20+ years building and scaling B2B SaaS, platform, and consumer products — from founding-stage startups to enterprise businesses within Mars Petcare. I combine product & business strategy, cross-functional execution, team leadership and user empathy to launch products people love — and metrics that move.

HIGHLIGHTS
- Built the Wisdom Panel product org and enterprise platform behind a $10M+ partnerships business and 5M+ pets tested.
- Took Dealpath from its first paying customer to >$10M ARR as VP Product, building the market-leading deal management platform for commercial real estate (Blackstone, Starwood).
- Scaled consumer products to massive reach: grew Zynga Poker >10× and Klout to 10M+ accounts and 100B+ API calls.

EXPERIENCE

Director & Head of Product — Wisdom Panel (Mars Petcare)
San Francisco, CA · Fountain Valley, CA | Nov 2021 to Present
- Built and led the Wisdom product organization across platform, growth, and engagement teams in a B2B2C environment, coaching junior and senior PMs & product designers toward their next career milestones, authoring talent-development plans, and hiring talent to scale the team.
- Drove the transition from siloed reporting products to a more-integrated enterprise platform: delivering B2B report deliverables, a shared B2B portal, and admin/ops tooling on a common data backbone to unify our pro breeder, vet, and pet-owner experiences & help scale our growing $10M+ partnerships business.
- Led intelligent workflow automation for partner- and clinic-facing operations, including both Banfield and Antech diagnostics integrations and pet parent claim experiences, critical to both maintain & grow $5M+ partnerships and contributing towards 5+ million Wisdom tested pets by 2025.
- Established the product org's first AI best-practices & usage policy and embedded LLM/AI tooling across product discovery and delivery, coordinating RACI with LT peers: standardized PM workflows through shared AI skills, sped up turnaround on customer feedback, and enabled more thorough competitive & brand research.
- Owned end-to-end lifecycle for flagship launches (Behaviors consumer feature; v6 reporting platform, B2B platform) and distilled portfolio roadmaps into strategic narratives for executive SDx leadership and external Mars, Royal Canin, Banfield stakeholders.

VP Product & Sr. Advisor — Dealpath
San Francisco, CA | Jun 2015 to Dec 2021
- Owned product roadmap, execution, and team management as part of the core executive team.
- Built the product that became a market leader for deal management in commercial real estate.
- Led product growth, from landing the first paying customers ($198 check!) to seeing growth to >$10M ARR.
- Worked closely with major CRE institutions, including Blackstone & Starwood Property Trust, to understand & deliver product features to ensure long-term engagement.
- Advised on product strategy and scaling practices during a high-growth phase post-tenure.

Co-founder — Stealth startup
San Francisco, CA | 2013 to 2015
- Prototyped a new platform for group acqui-hiring. Probably still a good idea, but didn't work out this time!
- Raised seed round; learned & internalized fundraising & storytelling basics, when to say yes vs no.

Head of Product — Klout
San Francisco, CA | Jan 2011 to Dec 2012
- Oversaw consumer features & redesign that grew Klout to 10M+ accounts and 100B+ API calls.
- Led roadmap and launches for mobile and business platforms, landing major brand partnerships (e.g., Spotify via Klout Perks) and new revenue channels.

Lead PM / Senior PM — Zynga
San Francisco, CA | Aug 2008 to Mar 2011
- Led product for Zynga platform components and grew Zynga Poker >10×.
- Defined sustainable growth mechanics for social gaming as part of the ZWorld initiative.
- Designed & launched Poker Blitz, the best poker game you'll never play.

Product Manager — Yahoo!
San Francisco, CA · Sunnyvale, CA | Aug 2007 to Aug 2008
- Owned product for Y! Worlds platform and launch initiatives such as branded experiences.

SKILLS
A/B Testing, Agile Development, AI / LLM Products, AI / ML, B2B SaaS, Commercial Real Estate, Consumer Product, Data & Experimentation, Gamification Theory, Go-to-Market, Hiring & Org Design, OKRs, P&L Management, Pet Genomics, Platform Strategy, Pricing & Monetization, Product Design, Product Growth, Product Strategy, Product-Led Growth, Roadmapping, Startups, Storytelling, Team Leadership, User Experience

EDUCATION
University of Virginia — Charlottesville, VA
MS, Management Information Systems (2007)
BS, Economics and Psychology (2005)

Web version: https://christophermakarsky.com/