David Jesse
Founder & Advisor
at Crescendo Product Group
Product executive, coach and transformation leader with twenty-five years of experience scaling startups up through global businesses. Proven success as CPO at Fetch (grew from 1.2M to 5.1M active customers), VP Product at Groupon (led product through hypergrowth prior to IPO), as well as product executive roles at DoorDash, eBay, and Gaia Interactive.
As a coach and fractional product leader, I’ve guided dozens of companies from seed stage to Fortune 20, focusing on:
- Building high-performing product organizations
- Defining outcome-driven product strategy
- Scaling through critical growth phases
- Transforming product culture and processes
Deep expertise in marketplaces, e-commerce, and consumer products, with successful advisory experience across SaaS, fintech, healthcare, and enterprise software. Available for leadership coaching, advisory roles, board roles, and fractional product executive engagements.
Operating Expert Rating
Articles by David Jesse
How Shaun Merritt Vibe-Coded Karrot.ai As A Solo Builder
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Shaun Merritt, cofounder and CTO of Karrot.ai, a LinkedIn ABM tool. Shaun was kind enough to share a comprehensive breakdown of how...
7 Steps to Build a Product That Sells Itself
The Founder’s Mental Health Playbook: What I Learned After Nearly Burning Out
A hard-won guide to staying mentally healthy while building a startup I founded Stitcher, the podcast platform, in 2007 and ran it for seven years until we sold in 2014....
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) for Early Stage Companies
In our latest session from the Mucker Growth Series featuring Ethan Smith from Graphite, we explored AEO, a significant new approach for optimizing visibility in AI-driven search, particularly relevant as...
Startup Guide to AI Visibility: Be the Brand ChatGPT Recommends
Introduction Today, users aren’t just searching on Google. They’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI systems for advice. AI visibility is the new frontier of brand awareness....
Practical Uses of AI & Automation for Startup Operations
In a recent Mucker Growth Series session, we invited Rock Vitale, Founder & CEO of Easie, to share how he’s helped early-stage teams move from manual, fragmented workflows to streamlined,...