Sheet 04 · About

Designer by training. Builder by habit. Operator by choice.

I’m Jake. My roots are in animation and art school. I taught myself to build expressive web experiences at digital agencies, moved into UX leadership, spent six years building zero-to-one products as a consultant, and became a Chief Product Officer. Each step added one layer: craft, then people, then commercial results.

Fig. 00 · Official headshot. The photographer said “smolder.”

Jake grinning next to a light-up skeleton at a Halloween party — Fig. 00b · Actual me, after the Halloween Hack that produced both of Rentvine’s biggest AI bets.

Today I lead product the way I learned to make things: close to the material. At Rentvine I built the product and design org from nothing, tied the roadmap to growth targets, and still found time to ship a production feature myself.

The through-line is simple. I like hard problems that end in something real: a product, a team, a number on the board deck.

Outside work I build things for the fun of it. That’s included laser-engraved ballparks, a cabin-club venture, and too many AI prototypes to count. I’m a girl dad and an outdoor enthusiast. I love Missouri’s rivers and trails, by kayak, bike or 4x4, and especially the trails that follow a river.

§ Changelog Career, as release notes

20 years, five major versions.

v5.x
Product executive
2024 → Present
- Rentvine: Chief Experience Officer (Mar 2024), then Chief Product Officer (Jun 2025)
- Built product & design from zero to 20 people; 4,682% three-year revenue growth (Inc. 5000)
- Early product work helped secure a $74M growth investment from Mainsail Partners
- Shipped the first MCP in SFR property management
v4.x
Zero-to-one consulting
2018 → 2024
- Slalom: Solution Principal, then Practice Lead, then Senior Director
- Led CX, Design & Change Management: ~35 consultants, $10M annual target
- Core ($30M first-year revenue) and Fluid Genius (13 awards) for Eastman
- Grew Enterprise Rent-A-Car into an $11–12M account
v3.0
UX leadership
2016 → 2018
- Edward Jones: Director of User Experience over research, design and front-end teams
- Built design-thinking capability serving 20,000 offices; projects saved $30M a year
v2.x
Design & creative direction
2010 → 2016
- Banyan Communications: Digital Strategist, then Creative Director (CDC, NIH)
- XPLANE: Designer for Microsoft, Intel and Lowe’s
- Adjunct Professor of Web Design, Webster University
v1.x
Interactive & art direction
2005 → 2010
- TOKY, Touchwood, Integrity
- BFA, Computer Animation, Missouri State University (2004)

§ Culture Contact sheet, roll 01

Teams people want to be on.

I replaced stuffy quarterly planning with something I named Rendezvous (RDV). The first three shaped our AI-first operating model: more, smaller pods covering more ground with the same people. Now they’re high-velocity working sessions. At RDV 5 we shipped 9 features.

The Rentvine product and engineering team at RDV 5, waving at the camera

01RDV 5 · 9 features shipped

§ Values How I lead

What I run teams on.

Humble first.
The best idea wins, no matter whose it is. No ego, no assholes: talent doesn’t excuse behavior. I hire for it, protect the team from it, and hold myself to it first.
Stay curious.
I’d rather ask the obvious question early than ship the wrong answer late. Curiosity is how an art director ends up building AI agents.
Leaders ship.
The maker mindset is in my DNA. I have a bias toward action: inertia is the real enemy, and a working prototype beats another meeting about one. I stay close enough to the work to build it, from prototype to production. That’s how I know what’s possible, and how I earn the right to ask for it.
Empathy is design fuel.
Empathy is a habit, not a research phase. Sit with users, listen to the support calls, watch someone struggle with what you built. Every roadmap is a set of promises to them, and I want to keep them.
Tie the roadmap to the number.
Every bet on the roadmap should trace to a growth target the board already cares about.