Andrew Brinkman

At Hudl I learned to pitch and build: Assist went from an idea at a company call for ideas to a $25M+ line. At Buildertrend I learned to change an organization that did not want to change: twelve squads, a sales motion retrained, logo retention up 25 points. Between Hudl and Buildertrend, Sling TV taught me in a year that a billion-dollar consumer platform was not where I do my best work, and Bonusly taught me to cut: a survey product killed, an enterprise motion built, and a layoff that took most of the product org with it. At Leap, as Head of Product, I build the evidence first and let it argue: fourteen interviews, a churn ledger tied to finance, an audit of my own AI that came back half wrong, and a finding that product causes a minority of churn, reported before anything else. At every company I have retired something people were attached to: Watch Party at Sling, a survey product at Bonusly, a churn signal at Leap that flattered my own lane.

My employers have ranged from growth-equity backed (Leap, backed by Nexa Equity) to PE-backed (Buildertrend, backed by Bain Capital, HGGC, and Serent Capital) to venture-backed (Bonusly, which closed its Series B led by Ankona Capital while I was there; Hudl, backed by Bain Capital) to a public company's streaming arm (Sling TV). I hold an MBA from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's Raikes School and started as a software engineer at IBM. I coach product talent; several people I developed now run their own product organizations.