Jason S Kendall

I work in the software industry as a Product Manager. I’m most inspired when working through the many things that need to happen when bringing a product or experience into the world.

My path to product management has been non-traditional. At different points in my life I've worked as: Chef, Soldier, Bike Messenger, Record Store Clerk, Tree Worker, Professional Musician, Video-Game Artist, Voice Over Actor, Producer and more. 

I was lucky enough to carve out a career in this industry through the relationships I’ve made and hold dear. It went something like this:

My band at the time was imploding after years of hard touring. A friend of mine was the art director at a video game studio in Cambridge, MA and he offered me an opportunity to join the team as an artist. The studio was making music based video games. I joined a small team assembled to create Guitar Hero and I was tasked with creating the guitar and amp 3D models. I also did motion capture animation, voice over work (I’m the tutorial voice) and even had songs in the game. 

From there I went on to become a producer since I realized I’m a better product leader then I am visual artist. I worked on the next installment of Guitar Hero and then I climbed the ranks to Lead Producer throughout the Rock Band franchise. I’m not going to list everything I did on these games but it was classic start up behavior, many hats worn.

After learning so much at Harmonix, I had the good fortune to land a Product Management role at Sonos. I really grew at Sonos. In my 5 years there I shipped products and experiences and really enjoyed my role as PM in the organization. The work hit the sweet spot between music and technology that I enjoy. Day to day I would collaborate with leading music services (Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Pandora, Tidal, Deezer, Soundcloud etc) as we created user experiences together on the Sonos platform. I led a team of full stack developers and we shipped many impactful experiences and software products that made the Sonos experience better and better. 

At this point in my career I was getting very interested in wearables technology and the experiences one could have with them, especially on streaming services. I took a role at Bose as Senior Product Manager leading wearables experiences. As the Lead PM and product owner for wearables experiences, I was responsible for defining and driving the software feature roadmap and prioritization across the wearables product line from concept to delivery. I led multiple teams building software for wearables (banded headphones, in ear headphones and frames) both in app and on device. I experienced lots of growth here as I got deeper into Product Management best practices and strategy.

After 2.5 years at Bose, I had the good fortune to be offered a leadership role at Inveniem. At Inveniem I drive product strategy and execution for the company as we work with artists to preserve and digitize their physical archives, deliver digital and physical museum experiences, monetization opportunities and livestream events that connect them to their fans and preserve their legacy. The work is very start up based and I’m wearing many hats, but my main responsibility at Inveniem is building out a product organization and creating process and priority that helps the company scale and be successful. Our client list includes some of the most well known artists, labels, estates, and industry leaders.