Jerome

Hello, I'm Jerome.

Product Leader

14 years building financial products for freelancers and small businesses, and growing them: onboarding, activation, conversion, and revenue per user.

Selected work

Built for people who run their own business.

Banking, lending, and insurance for freelancers and small businesses, and the growth work underneath: onboarding, activation, conversion, and monetization. Five case studies to read and two prototypes to click through.

Oxygen2021 – 2023 · Case study

Turning a hundred thousand free accounts into a membership business

Oxygen earned revenue one way, interchange on card spend, and one account in a hundred was worth serving. Elements was a four-tier membership for freelancers and one-person businesses, free to $199.99 a year, with the eligibility rules, referral payouts, and cashback caps built around the two behaviors that make an account profitable. Launch week put Oxygen fifth on the App Store Finance chart, ahead of every bank, and a fake-door test picked business formation, the S corp specifically, as the wedge for the business line.

Director of Product ManagementMembership, growth, monetizationFree → $199.99 a year
Read the case study
The Oxygen Elements card lineup
Concept2026 · Prototype

A back office that shows its work

A financial back office for the self-employed earns its subscription in tax savings the member never sees. This concept puts the number on the home screen, shows the math, has an agent draft the quarterly payment for approval, and asks for a referral at the moment the savings become real. The last screen is what I would measure.

Growth · value realizationAgent proposes, member approves5-screen walkthrough
Click through the prototype
Reyes Design Studio ⌄
Saved so far in 2026
$8,496
vs. filing as a sole proprietor. On track for $9,257 by year end.
Q4 federal estimate drafted · $4,180Due Jan 15. Review before it schedules.
Books
Taxes
Payroll
Invoices
BlueVine2020 – 2021

Onboarding that converts, and $4.5B in loans shipped during COVID

I rebuilt the PPP application as a progressive flow ordered by the decision instead of the paperwork, and onboarding conversion rose 30%. The platform processed $4.5B in SBA-backed loans for more than 155,000 small businesses while the federal rules changed overnight, and the forgiveness tool turned a manual SBA compliance review into a self-serve flow.

Read the case study
Senior Product Manager+30% conversion
Perfect Price2018 – 2019

Making the value of an AI product visible enough to trust

I inherited a churn-heavy B2B pricing product whose customers accepted about 30% of its recommendations. New customer segmentation and direct feedback loops took adoption to 60%, past the threshold at which customers switched on automatic pricing, and continuous deployment cut time-to-launch from months to days.

Read the case study
Director of Product Management30% → 60% adoption
Upfort2023 – 2026

Growing a product its users never chose to buy

Upfort sells cyber insurance and security to small businesses through carriers and brokers, so the SMB using the product never made the purchase decision. We reset the North Star from partner sign-up to end-customer activation, and I redesigned onboarding for admins who arrive with a policy number and no intent, and launched AI-powered underwriting inside a regulated insurance business. Seven products, two PMs, two designers, and marketing, sales, and partnerships covered directly.

Read the case study
Head of Product7-product portfolio
Upfort2026 · Prototype

How I build: a smishing simulation prototyped before engineering touched it

Realistic SMS phishing drills normally depend on spoofing carriers. This prototype delivers the simulated text through a companion app instead, coaches the employee the moment they click, and gives the consultant an anonymized view by department. Built with AI coding agents for an internal build-off, the same way my teams validate a flow before engineering hardens it.

Click through the prototype
Head of Product5-screen walkthrough
LoanSnap2019 – 2020

Mortgage processing cut from 15 days to 36 hours

Redesigned a legacy origination workflow and cut mortgage processing time from 15 days to 36 hours, and built a mortgage-backed investment product alongside it.

Read the case study
Product Lead15 days → 36 hours
MSCI2012 – 2017

Global product strategy for hedge fund and wealth analytics

Led product strategy for an analytics platform serving hedge funds and wealth managers across San Francisco and New York, built NLP-based search that grew usage 40%, and managed a five-person analyst team. Turned a declining stress-testing product toward the asset owners who set the agenda for the funds that follow them, validated in a design sprint, a clickable prototype, and fifty client meetings before engineering built it.

VP, Data Product Management+40% usage

Quantitative by training, hands-on by habit, and focused on teams that ship.

Cross-functionalTeam building
“I particularly valued the constructive working relationships Jerome built with colleagues across engineering, design, and the business. His documentation and planning practices made product work easier for colleagues to follow. … His contributions to career ladders, team planning, and design hiring also strengthened the team’s operating structure.”
Xing XinCEO, Upfort
PragmaticBig picture
“From Risk Analyst to Product Manager Jerome has always been the most knowledgeable and very pragmatic person in the room. His ability to comprehend big picture, grasp complex tasks, and clearly understand business objectives, all combined with great attention to details, always made him very valuable player in the team and allowed him to lead others to successful deliveries.”
Michal M.Worked with Jerome for 10 years
All recommendations on LinkedIn

More work

Numbers that moved

2×ARPU after four launches
Oxygen2021 – 2023

Monetization that kept pace with growth

Four feature launches for freelancers and small businesses, including SMB budgeting and business banking tools, doubled revenue per user while platform users grew 4x after the relaunch.

Director of Product ManagementMonetization
+30%Onboarding conversion
BlueVine2020 – 2021

An application ordered by the decision, not the form

The PPP application rebuilt as a progressive flow that asks only what the decision needs, measured on conversion rather than completeness.

Senior Product ManagerKYC & onboarding
Self-serveSBA forgiveness, no manual review
BlueVine2020 – 2021

A compliance workflow turned into product

Loan forgiveness was a manual SBA compliance review. The tool I shipped made it a self-serve flow for borrowers who had never read the rules.

Senior Product ManagerSBA lending
36 hrsMortgage processing, down from 15 days
LoanSnap2019 – 2020

A legacy origination workflow, redesigned

Cut mortgage processing from 15 days to 36 hours by redesigning the origination workflow, and built a mortgage-backed investment product alongside it.

Product LeadMortgage
+40%Platform usage after NLP search
MSCI2012 – 2017

Global product strategy for hedge fund and wealth analytics

Led product strategy for the analytics platform across San Francisco and New York, built NLP-based search, and managed a team of analysts.

VP, Data Product ManagementAnalytics platform
VelocityThe team's primary OKR
Upfort2023 – 2026

Product development rebuilt around AI agents and experiments

Prototypes built in Claude Code reached customers before engineering hardened them, internal agents ran the routine work, and PostHog instrumented every launch against its success measure.

Head of ProductProcess & tooling
Jerome Bragdon

San Francisco, CA

About

Fintech product leader for the self-employed and small-business side of finance.

I've spent 14 years in fintech: consumer and small-business banking, SBA and SMB lending, mortgage, and insurance. Since 2020 that work has been for people who run their own business: PPP borrowers, a neobank's freelancers and small businesses, and the SMBs that buy cyber insurance through a broker. Most of it sits in regulated, compliance-heavy flows, which is where I've learned to be most useful.

I work hands-on. Prototypes go in front of customers before engineering builds, every launch ships with its success measure, and at a Series A company I covered marketing, sales, and partnerships myself when there was no one else to do it.

Education
UC Santa Cruz, M.S. Applied Economics & Finance and B.A. Global Economics. CFA Level II candidate. UC Education Abroad Program at the University of Göttingen and the University of Maastricht.
Growth
Onboarding and activation, conversion funnels, A/B and multivariate testing, prototype tests, pricing and monetization, adoption and retention instrumentation, sales-assisted and partner-led funnels
Fintech domains
Consumer and small-business banking, SMB and SBA lending, KYC and onboarding, underwriting and risk, loan origination, mortgage, cyber insurance, wealth and hedge fund platforms
AI
AI-powered underwriting, AI coding agents for prototyping and development (Claude Code, Bolt, Lovable), internal agents and LLM automations, NLP search
Technical
SQL, Python, R, Java, C, React, Django, VBA
Analytics & UX
PostHog, Mixpanel, Figma, Sketch, Zeplin, Customer.io, Linear, Jira, Miro
Leadership
Hiring and managing PMs and designers, product and design run as one team, career ladders and team planning, distributed teams across US and Latin American time zones, partner and channel management
Off the clock
Fluent German, conversational Dutch. BJCP-certified beer judge. Registered Adult Leader, Scouting America. Parent Association President at the German International School of Silicon Valley, 2021 to 2023. Habitat for Humanity carpenter, IMBA trail builder in Santa Cruz County, PADI Open Water diver.

Contact

Ready to talk?

Growth and core product leadership in fintech. Based in San Francisco, at home in the office and across time zones.

Email Jerome LinkedIn Resume (PDF)