In this episode, I speak with Jamie Mercer, Chief Product Officer at Trusted Housesitters, the global pet care and travel marketplace disrupting two industries at once. Jamie has previously held senior product roles at VoucherCodes, Skyscanner, Student Beans and IVC Evidensia, and now leads product at a scale-up known for putting trust at the heart of its community-driven business.
We cover a lot, including:
- TrustedHousesitters' unique proposition - a two-sided marketplace mixing travel and pet sitting, where both pet owners and sitters pay a subscription to help create mutual trust and respect.
- Scaling through word of mouth - 70-75% of members join via a friend, and how the team are working to amplify that growth while keeping trust at the centre.
- Balancing marketplace dynamics - keeping supply and demand in sync, supporting new sitters with no ratings, and using AI and personalisation to build confidence.
- Using AI responsibly - from accelerating customer insight analysis to improving customer support, AI speeds up decision-making but always in service of company strategy.
- Building empowered product teams - why Jamie invested early in product ops and product marketing instead of hierarchy, and how she's now preparing to scale with Product Directors.
- Commercial product management - the importance of PMs with business acumen who can link solving customer problems with driving commercial outcomes.
- Executive alignment as the hardest (and most valuable) job - why alignment across the C-suite is the best air cover a leader can provide for their teams.
- Lessons from leadership - why some of the hardest decisions are killing months of work, the surprise of soft skills dominating the CPO role, and why leadership still matters in the AI era.
Check out Trusted Housesitters' website: https://trustedhousesitters.com/, or their careers page: https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/careers/.
Connect with JamieYou can connect with Jamie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiemercer/.
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