Chris Horn

Product Manager at a Series A cybersecurity startup (cloud infrastructure configuration compliance)

• Within first 90 days, delivered two buildtime scan capabilities to satisfy executive promise to then-largest customer using competitive research, technical and UX design, development oversight, documentation, and release coordination
• Helped close two of company’s largest-ever deals with a series of refinements to product usability and reliability, plus hands-on guidance of customer evaluation process
• Decreased sales funnel drop-out of prospects with better product story, product demonstration, pricing, and consultative engagement – informed by technical expertise and understanding of stakeholder motivations, jobs to be done, and product competition
• Successfully led a $3M+ implementation/onboarding of a global Top 10 bank customer
• Closed $500k of professional services revenue using value-based selling
• Influenced culture to foster honest dialogues based on a foundation of shared understanding, clarity of purpose, plus attitudes of empathy, psychological safety, and positivity

Product & technology advisor to a pre-seed web3 privacy and data economy startup

• Identified, and built shared understanding of, key requirements for web3 data licensing protocol
• Supported development, go-to-market, and M&A of MyFriday iOS privacy reclamation app
• Developed automated email processing application using Python, Gmail, and Digital Ocean
• Helped generate publicity by leading creation of Solana Hackathon submission

Leader and Principal Investigator of cybersecurity product research & development

• Led two government-funded R&D product development projects (Kompar and Samaritan) with combined budgets of $2.75M – hands-on and managerial responsibility for delivery, including research agendas, data analysis, product roadmaps, requirements, technical architectures, sprint/scrum processes, UX design, product content, technical and financial reports
• Proposed and won Lead UX designer role on STR’s software assurance product team for $50M+ DARPA Automated Rapid Certification of Software (ARCOS) program
• Drove product website usage from 0→100+ sessions per month through targeted marketing to 400+ security professionals via podcast, email campaigns, and 3 regional and international conferences
• Validated market demand and product-market fit through research and competitive analysis incl. product presentations, partnership discussions, and pilot program negotiations
• Managed a five company, six team project with an $18M budget to build a unified threat management system that yielded open source tools and commercial technology
• Recruited & supervised 2 PhD researchers, managed cross-functional teams of 2-12
• Defended project funding through 5 sponsor leader changes and multiple decision gates

Consulting Product Manager and advisor to cybersecurity startup acquired by Synopsys

• Defined requirements and supervised development of Triage Assistant functionality that uses machine learning to enable users to save hundreds of hours of work
• Helped increased revenues by >30% by building spreadsheet to analyze new pricing models
• Helped generate hundreds of qualified sales leads by representing Code Dx at 5 conferences; presented talks about application security, networked, and provided booth support, including product demonstrations and explanations of value proposition
• Created content for sales training battle cards, marketing, and product roadmap via detailed product competitive analysis
• Positioned Code Dx as the “application security system of record” with Gartner analysts and influenced their market definition to align with our product’s capabilities
• Supported executive decisions about company organization structure, hiring, and employee compensation

Product Manager at rapidly growing SaaS company

• Led development and release of new Performance Measurement & Compliance (PMC) software system to measure order fulfillment performance, send alert notifications, and track historical data for 30,000 suppliers – increasing accuracy, decreasing complaints, and reducing support/operations costs
• Successfully delivered PMC system through cross-functional leadership and hands-on work; conducted user research, defined requirements, influenced software architecture, and collaborated with engineering, UX, customer support, marketing, and legal
• Ensured successful roll-out and adoption of PMC system by leading go to market efforts: market positioning, sales & support training, presentations, videos, and direct support
• Achieved self-service product functionality in a complex environment by coordinating discovery and upgrade of multiple legacy systems, plus creation of new systems
• Saved company over $400k by influencing technology choices of CIO, CTO, and architecture
• Improved product quality across product teams by developing & championing a product development process w/ RACI across product, marketing, engineering, and QA
• Collaboratively developed business case evaluation framework to structure decision criteria, encourage objectivity, and streamline portfolio management discussions

Principal design resource within company of 50

• Key member of R&D contract proposal & delivery team, successfully delivered 8 major projects in tight collaboration with engineering and executive leadership
• Supported creation of >$3M in new business proposals, including concept generation, proposal writing, graphics and visualization, work breakdown, and networking events
• Delivered geographically-distributed operator interface for a next-generation computer network defense system for the U.S. Navy using use case development, requirements analysis, workflow & wireframe design, HTML/CSS prototypes, and software architecture design
• Aligned development teams on $7.3M National Cyber Range program using user personas and workflow use cases
• Authored research reports and contributed to invention of hardware & software systems for 802.11 WiFi security system
• Mapped and visualized computer network defense processes and systems of U.S. Navy
• Designed GUI and verified a web app to navigate and analyze multi-level cybersecurity metrics created by research at George Mason University (GMU)
• Designed and presented GUI concepts for new RSA Continuous Composite Identity Claim Verification product
• Co-developed and presented training material for applying principles of information visualization to the design of information security visualizations
• Developed company-wide design and user testing guide; trained staff on its application

Design & research staff member focused on complex, information-rich systems

• Sole interaction designer for web-based logistics tool that enabled client to earn the only Army 2008 Secretary of Defense Performance Based Logistics Award
• Kiosk design saved client $300k and won ‘Best in Show’ at KioskCom Expo
• Successfully managed $30k to $550k+ projects with clients including GD and Whirlpool
• Active in business development and proposal writing; helped win $600k+
• Developed content and taught a human-centered design training course to engineering staff of client firms; effort later spun out as separate business called Luma Institute
• Performed project work including study design for inter-rater reliability, contextual inquiry, think-aloud testing, and wireframing

Jack-of-all-trades worked all aspects of service creation while bootstrapping the company

• Co-designed internal policies & systems to help grow service to 16,000+ subscribers
• Wrote patent, designed logo, wrote & recorded phone tree, wrote backend Perl code
• Built internal collaborative infrastructure to allow the team to work
• Created IVR phone tree by recording audio and programming using Asterisk PBX and Linux

Lab member conducting human time perception research with Dr. Coty Gonzales

• Performed review of dynamic decision making/time perception literature
• Designed and coded subject task (Java-based game about “stocks & flows”) and conducted experimental sessions

Member of technical staff that supported multiple research projects

• Developed agent-based simulation models of military C4ISR systems
• Identified need and built a grid computing system that spanned the CA and VA offices; grid decreased the time to develop simulation models by ≥50%
• Wrote report sections describing model, modeling approach, and findings
• Gave presentation on computational grids and RAND’s Condor grid to ~50 programmers
• Represented RAND at requirements development meetings for DoD biometrics system
• Drafted educational material about biometric technologies and their application
• Statistically analyzed a large volume of survey data in Stata and Excel