Samuel Crosland

Samuel Crosland

0-1 Product Lead in London, He/him

About

I'm an experienced product leader of over 10 years with a background in design. I specialise in leading digital product teams to build 0-1 (and beyond) software that creates and sustains online connection. I've done this successfully at companies such as Twitter, Depop, and Peanut.

Work Experience

2023 — Now
London

Busuu's a community-driven language learning product. I joined Busuu after their acquisition by Chegg in 2022 to drive the company toward sustainable business growth.

  • I led the 0-1 organisation within Busuu. Responsible for performance and impact of the multiple product teams that launched the first AI-powered features for the company.

  • Took initiative to increase the organisations velocity, introduced new phased launch processes to dramatically decrease the amount of time it took to get a product from idea to delivering real value to our users.

  • Before leading 0-1, as PM Lead for Pricing, led the rollout of new global pricing strategy and global price changes leading to a +2% impact on GMV.

2021 — 2023
London

Following the acquisition of Sphere in October 2021. I joined Twitter to lead the member experience side of the 0-1 @HiCommunities Product team, building the future of how communities interact on the internet.

  • Worked directly with the Communities PM team to drive forward the future vision of the product. From 1 million daily active users to being a globally available part of the Twitter ecosystem.
  • Helped manage the input of multiple stakeholders for each project. Particularly ensuring our releases were legally compliant, secure and communicated in a way that our users understood.
  • Lead the delivery of multiple updates to the Communities experience. Including Polls, Pinned tweets, Hashtags + hashtag discovery, Community specific tweet anatomy, Community specific notifications, Community profile spotlights.
2021 — 2021
London
  • Led the creation of the Product Vision, strategy and ongoing product roadmap. Including customer research, high-level discovery + definition of Product-Market-Fit.
  • Transformed the company product strategy to focus on customer learning. Motivated the team to take Sphere from stealth product to something that delivered measurable customer value. Resulting in real growth and retention of new networks.
  • Accountable for maintaining the prioritisation and alignment of the product/engineering teams across 3 cross-functional squads.
  • Line manager of 3 incredible Product Managers. Put in place numerous initiatives to improve team communication and product quality. Set clear objectives and robust feedback loops.
2019 — 2021
Head of Product at Peanut
London
  • Responsible for the impact of new features on key product metrics. Including LTV, engagement and retention. Led the product discovery process including research and design initiatives to improve the sustainability of the business.
  • Crafted the end-to-end product development process. Improved communication and focus from the whole team resulting in increased velocity and more predictable release dates.
  • Successfully delivered a new community that provides support to women throughout their fertility journey. Adding 10% MoM to the overall customer base.
2014 — 2019
Product Manager at Depop
London
  • Owned the end-to-end consumer lifecycle whilst part of the early product team. Maintained a consistent vision of where we were headed and a healthy team culture.
  • Created the initial strategy for the Web platform team. Including delivering the Web checkout initiative which added 2% Revenue to the company in the first 3 months after launch.
  • Led designers & engineers, making decisions around the prioritisation of high-growth features, launching multiple initiatives including a/b tests around the app onboarding flow and experiments with ML-driven recommendations and personalisation. - Supported stakeholders though growth initiatives in performance marketing.
2013 — 2014
Lead Product Designer at YPlan
London
  • Re-designed the platform to continue to deliver a world-class customer experience whilst increasing the amount of events we could show to users.
  • Spearheaded the use of low and high fidelity prototypes to increase the velocity at which we could test and launch new features.
  • Launched the YPlan partner portal CRM, allowing events managers to track sales in real-time. Reducing the need for manual updating and reliance on phone calls from events organisers.
  • Responsible for the design of the Share functionality. Bringing more social interaction to the YPlan app, including ticket sharing + group messaging. Leading to a 5% uplift in repeat ticket sales.
2009 — 2013
London
  • Led embedded UX teams within high profile client projects, to deliver transformational new products and services
  • Worked with the internal stakeholders to define the requirements of each part of the experience to ensure impact.
  • Developed design systems and principles that guided how each product would work.
  • Drove the use of interactive prototyping to ensure maximum impact from user research sessions and internal stakeholder meetings.

Education

2005 — 2008
BA Hons (1st) at Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield, UK

Product Design