Matt Smith

Bio:

I'm a business and strategy expert with a focus on product management, and have over ten years of experience building media and technology companies. I approach all challenges from the same angle: understand the long-term strategy, understand the value, and break things down to simple ideas.

• Title: Director of New Products, Shutterstock
• Age: 32
• Location: Upper West Side
• Contact: @mjordonsmith, about.me

Your current title at Shutterstock is Director of New Business.  What are your day to day responsibilities?  How does it compare to your last position there as Business Value Product Owner?

As the Director of New Business at Shutterstock, my main goals is to understand what's next and how it fits into the overall business.  On a daily basis, I am doing research (talking with users, understanding their daily routines and what problems or issues they face, etc), prioritizing problems (taking the feedback from users and determining what the number one issue is), working with my teams to see if we can identify potential solutions, and ultimately bringing those ideas back to users so that we can test them and see if we are on to something.  Previously, as the Business Value Product Owner, I was focused on helping the company grow from an operational standpoint; payment processing, how do we increase the efficiency of internal folks, etc.  Both positions focus on taking the company to the next level, which is something that I love to do and something that I have done in the past. 

Any personal new year’s resolution(s)?

Absolutely - build more.  I'm making 2012 the year of testing some personal ideas that I have been working on and seeing what's out there.  I think most of us in the NYC tech scene are entrepreneurs at heart; we are always looking at ways to solve problems, help people, and build businesses. 

What do you think 2012 will be like for New York tech?  Any predictions in trends at the start of the new year?

I think 2012 is just the beginning of big things.  I expect the NYC tech scene to get even stronger and more personal over the next year or so.  I've seen it already and am excited for it to continue; people in the community are willing to help each other out - everyone wants to see success, not just on a personal level, but on grander scale, on a community scale, and I think it's amazing.  My biggest prediction, and I don't want to give too much away of course as it's one of my ideas, is a wave of summarizing/consolidation applications; specifically tools that allow you to manage and digest different pieces of content from various sources across the web in one place.  It's going to be very tricky and will be a UX challenge above all else. I'm really excited about it!