What is the best way to build a career? It’s probably best to start with the end in mind. Or you could learn from Ben Katz, a startup Product & Growth leader rounding out a wide ranging skillset with each step he takes. Because it’s not about how you get there, but that you get there. As the GM of Health & Fitness at Appex, Ben is building the foundation for a long career in entrepreneurship.
Ben grew up locally in Westford, the oldest of three children with two younger sisters. His mom set the tone, instilling work ethic and an ethos of being a person of your word. His dad was a software designer, always pointing out the practical (or impractical) ways that products were built and used.
When Ben was in high school, he ran a landscaping business moving lawns. Generating a bunch of referrals, he grew to employ some of his classmates on the wrestling & football teams, making a healthy spread between his clientele and workforce. It was his first experience running a business and he loved it.
Staying local, he headed off to Babson to study Entrepreneurship. There was a special energy at the college that hardwired your brain to “do your own thing”. They make a deliberate effort to help entrepreneurship feel so much more realistic & achievable. As graduation approached, investment banking was a potential career option, but as he began networking and understanding the specifics of the career, he realized that path wasn’t for him.
Aspiring to start his own business, he began to thoughtfully plan for the skills he would need to obtain for his journey. First up? Learning how to sell..
He started at Experian where he sold their Data Quality products, an incredibly valuable experience where he learned how to sell and acquired the “soft skills” needed to be successful in a GTM environment. He ran meetings, crafted e-mails with compelling narratives, and learned prioritization. After about a year, he had mastered the basics and he felt like his rhythm of learning and growth trajectory had slowed.
Ben wanted to find something more strategic, so he took a role as an Ecommerce Strategy Associate at Wayfair. He worked on the Merchandising team in their Flooring group. Flooring had unique challenges, not often really sold on the internet, so he & his team had to figure out how to position themselves. They built a samples program, working closely with suppliers to learn about consumer expectations. It was during his time at Wayfair that he discovered product management and realized that this was the skillset he needed to learn to accomplish his long-term goals.
Ben made it his mission to learn the craft. He networked across the organization, meeting with as many Product leaders as he could inside and outside the organization too. Ryan Durkin, a Boston area Product leader, gave him phenomenal advice about breaking into Product Management and even shared a guide that helped him focus his efforts.
As Ben worked to make the jump over to Product Management at Wayfair, an opportunity presented itself. And it’s always better to be lucky than good, right?? WHOOP had an opening for an Associate PM role and, even better, one of their team members used to work with Ben at Wayfair and referred him for the role. To double the good fortune, the hiring manager had even gone to his high school, just a couple grades apart. And of course, he had the qualifications too!
He launched his Product career at WHOOP, starting on the monetization team. Ben and his team were responsible for optimizing customer LTV (lifetime value). They handled revenue expansion for existing members, as well as retention & churn prevention, and monitored overall business metrics to reduce involuntary churn from payment failures.
Payment failures are particularly important for WHOOP since they’re giving their customers expensive hardware for..effectively free. If that first payment fails they’re out the cost of goods sold and the acquisition cost. What we in the biz call a “double whammy”.
Ben spent his first six months optimizing the failed payment flow and his team drove a 5x increase in the rate at which users fixed their payment issues. Next, he took on the acquisition team overseeing both monetization and acquisition. Ben was responsible for checkout flow optimization, growing their referral program, their affiliate program, and more. During this time, his team built features that drove new users to refer 30% more friends!
Most recently, Ben took over the WHOOP storefront team responsible for accessories and, at that point, overseeing all Product in the growth vertical. One of the most influential people in Ben’s product journey at WHOOP was Nate Giacalone. He learned everything he knows about Product from Nate and describes him as “one of the best operators I’ve met in my life. I wouldn’t have had as fast of a career progression on the product side if I wasn’t coached by someone as high quality as Nate.”
Ben has always had a goal of starting his own company. Through a friend of a friend, he found a role that was uniquely suited for him. He started at Appex this past month as the GM of their Health & Fitness Portfolio.
Ben is responsible for buying, building, and growing their portfolio of health & fitness mobile apps. His job is to figure out how to grow things, what to buy to expand their portfolio, and evaluate if there are any gaps in the market. A perfect training ground for an aspiring entrepreneur.
Sustainable Growth – Product & Business Case
At WHOOP, Ben developed an exceptionally well rounded understanding of software product growth. He got to see and influence the three main levers for driving sustainable growth – acquisition, retention, and LTV optimization.
The main thing he learned? Balance.
A lot of early stage builders and problem solvers might think you’re trying to build something that customers are going to want to use more. To solve for the user, basically. But it’s not just the user problem you’re solving for. Balancing the business case is just as important. There are tradeoffs.
For example, when you’re shaping a premium offering (like they do at WHOOP) you’ll have to ask yourself “what does the customer want and what are the associated unit economics for the business?” How do you blend those (sometimes) competing objectives?
Thinking strategically is much more powerful than short term metric hacking when long term business impact is the real goal.
3 Career Insights / Learnings
The More You Learn, More You Earn – “Whenever you’re considering a career decision, there are three levers you have. The value of these levers change over time. First, general happiness. Do I feel like this work is fulfilling and like the people I’m around? The second is the financial incentive. And the third is ‘how much am I going to learn and how much closer is this going to get me to my long term goals?’ Early in your career you should over index on learning, even when it’s easy to over index on the financial piece. I’ve really reaped the rewards of some of those short term financial sacrifices I’ve made”
Extreme Ownership – “If you’re the person that says I own this and I’m going to figure out how to get this done, it’s never going to hurt you. The quality of output is going to be way higher if you feel responsible and accountable. When you lead by example this way The people around you can also feel that energy and the entire team gets elevated because you all care about the outcome.
Get Outside Your Comfort Zone – When you’re outside of your comfort zone is when you’re learning the most even when it feels like you’re wildly underwater. When you come out on the other side of that, that is experience you can rely on. You’re making tears in the muscle so that it comes back stronger and you can lift the weight”
Eventually, Ben wants to start his own business. If he won the lottery tomorrow, he said he would spend the next part of his life starting different businesses every 3-5 years so he could learn in a lot of different areas. The current opportunity he has at Appex gives him the opportunity to get valuable reps with talented colleagues so that he can obtain more critical early stage, hands on experience. Ben plans to use his three lever framework to evaluate all current and future opportunities.
If you want to learn more about Ben, you can find him on LinkedIn, growing or acquiring apps at Appex, or closely tracking his health & fitness with WHOOP. Thanks for sharing Ben. Excited to see the moves you make in the coming years!