Michael Friedman

San Francisco Bay Area · hello@itsmikef.com · linkedin.com/in/themjf

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Summary

Senior product manager with 14 years building search, ads, and personalization products at eBay, Expedia, Capital One, and Electronic Arts. At eBay, I own a portfolio of AI-driven search ad modules and personalization strategy at marketplace scale, and I prototype directly with LLMs and real marketplace data. Earlier wins include $11.5M in gross profit at Expedia, $10M in annual savings at Capital One, and a hardware product taken from concept to market as a startup's founding head of product.

Experience

eBay

October 2022 – Present

Senior Product Manager, Search Ads & AI Personalization

San Francisco Bay Area
  • Owned a portfolio of sponsored search modules spanning ads and organic inventory, including Top Picks (live on roughly 30% of searches), Featured Item Card, Deals, Popular Brands, Power Buyer Picks, and Quality Pre-Owned. Led experiment design, launch reviews, and iteration.
  • Kicked off and led AI-driven module generation, a system that uses LLMs to find uncovered query themes and generate each module's value proposition, selection criteria, and copy, compressing the module development cycle. Its first launch, Quality Pre-Owned, lifted total GMB 0.46% (about $194M annualized) and added about $2.6M in annualized ads revenue.
  • Power Buyer Picks lifted total direct US ads revenue 0.86% in testing and was confirmed for launch. Redesigned Deals eligibility grew module-level promoted listings revenue 16–25% with neutral total ads revenue.
  • Defined eBay's AI-native ads strategy around reusable capabilities (AI value propositions, justifications, dynamic collections, and confidence questions) that power sponsored formats in both search and agentic chat. Built a working AI Featured Item Card prototype that won Q2 2026 funding.
  • On eBay's shopper personalization platform, owned journey-stage inference: deriving where a shopper is in their journey from surface, session, and historical context, taken through early prototyping. Also authored the personalization framework for search and View Item modules (assortment, ordering, framing, and interaction).
  • Now leading C2C and shipping modules, including a conditional local discovery module, and partnering on eBay's 2027 C2C plan.
  • Build functional prototypes with real marketplace data using Claude Code, React, the Anthropic API, and the eBay Browse API, turning concepts into working experiences and Jira-ready requirements.

Podium

October 2021 – October 2022

Senior Product Manager, Automations

Lehi, UT
  • Designed and implemented Podium's primary automation solution, improving customer retention by 65%.
  • Launched new UI components used across Podium to drive use of all core features, increasing adoption by 78%.
  • Built internal tooling for business development, marketing, customer success, product, and engineering that grew the premade automation catalog from 6 to over 100.

Westa

September 2018 – October 2021

Head of Product

San Francisco Bay Area
  • Member of the founding team at a consumer hardware startup. Led all product development from concept to launch.
  • Took the product from prototype through manufacturing and launch, selling thousands of units.

Capital One

March 2017 – September 2018

Manager, Product Management

McLean, VA
  • Led strategic planning for four engineering teams and two PMs, providing the business and customer context to keep them on prioritized work.
  • Ran Capital One's A/B testing program, providing test design and oversight for 20 product teams and senior leadership.
  • Created Capital One's digital fraud and dispute experience, reducing support costs by $10M annually.

Expedia, Inc.

January 2016 – December 2016

Senior Product Manager

San Francisco, CA
  • Owned e-commerce site development and optimization, with wins totaling $11.5M in gross profit.
  • Led the design and development of optimized search, recommendations, and purchase funnel, increasing search conversion by 4% (+$6.4M).
  • Hired, managed, and developed two product managers.

Electronic Arts

July 2012 – September 2014

Senior E-Commerce Product Manager

Redwood City, CA
  • E-commerce product owner for the #1 PC game franchise (The Sims) and a #1 grossing iOS game (The Simpsons: Tapped Out).
  • Built a new e-commerce storefront from the ground up, increasing customer engagement by 12% and conversion by 5%.
  • Implemented recommendation systems, increasing new-install conversion by 9% (+$1.2M) and repeat-spender conversion by 1% (+$600K).
  • Shipped targeted offers (+18% revenue, +$2M), dynamically priced content (10–200% conversion lift), and mystery boxes (+$300K).

Education

Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business

MBA · President, Georgetown University Cycling Team

University of San Francisco

BS, Business (Finance)

Skills

Product: Search and ads monetization, personalization and recommendations, marketplaces and C2C, A/B and multivariate testing, pricing, 0-to-1 product development

AI and prototyping: LLM product design, agentic commerce, Claude Code, React, React Native, TypeScript, Anthropic API, Vercel, Figma

Leadership and analytics: Product strategy, PM hiring and mentoring, cross-functional leadership, data analysis, financial modeling, market research