Suggestions
Kevin Curtin
Fractional CTO / Building new products
Kevin Curtin is a software developer with a strong background in Customer Success, having held roles as a Product Engineer, Systems Engineer, Technical Lead, and Engineering Manager.
He emphasizes the importance of understanding end-users and the significance of the software being developed. Kevin has hands-on experience utilizing technologies such as Ruby, Rails, Elixir, Phoenix, Postgresql, and Javascript in production environments.
He pursued his education at the Flatiron School and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Kevin Curtin was previously associated with Contently.
Highlights
Three months ago I left my job as VP of Engineering at Fanatics Collectibles with no real plan other than to take some time off and recharge.
Why did I leave?
The 2 1/2 years I spent at zerocool (acq. by Fanatics) and Fanatics Collectibles were a whirlwind. I built zerocool - a direct to consumer blind dutch auction experience for non-sports trading cards. We had 10’s of thousands of people sign up and bid on our first two product releases and I discovered the challenges of building consumer products. Post-launch we changed gears and started hiring and building what would become Fanatics Live - a live shopping XP for trading cards that launched in July. While this was going on, we absorbed the engineering org of Topps (also acquired) and set about trying to modernize the underlying tech for the business. There were mergers, acquisitions, spinoffs, re-orgs and lots and lots of growth - we went from 0-45 engineers in around 9 months!
I learned a ton, but was spending 99% of my time on things that didn’t give me energy: budget, legal CYA, building consensus w/ misaligned stakeholders, etc. - all things that are necessary when leading an org within a large company but that are far removed from the day-to-day work of actually building great products. I was climbing the wrong hill and needed a change, so I left.
What now?
I’m getting back to doing what I enjoy most: building great products with great people. Simple as that. Part-time, full-time, freelance - it doesn’t matter to me as long as we are building and using technology to solve problems. Think of this post as a beacon to folks I’ve collaborated with in the past: I want to hear about what you’re working on and how I can help.
