Business Context
A 20-person team, moving fast without pausing for clarity.
Boomerang's founders — including the CTO and CRO — were racing to ship. Understandable for an early-stage team, but speed was substituting for clarity on what end users actually needed.
The Problem
Nobody was asking why before building.
Every customer call produced a new feature idea, and the backlog grew faster than the team could ship or measure any of it. Instead of designing what was asked for, I started asking why — questioning each proposed solution before building it.
Constraints
—Small team, no room for building the wrong thing twice
—Founders under investor pressure to show momentum fast
—No dedicated product strategist — the gap I ended up filling
My Leadership Role
I initiated it, and owned the whole workflow.
Warm Referral wasn't handed to me — I initiated the idea myself and owned the complete workflow end to end: how a lead gets understood the moment it lands in the CRM, how a warm path gets surfaced, and how the ask actually gets sent. That meant working directly with the founder, CTO, and CRO on product direction, not just screens.
Leadership
Initiated the idea
Owned end-to-end workflow
Direct founder + CTO + CRO alignment
Mentored a junior designer
Roadmap prioritization
Execution
The system is fully automated once a rep connects their CRM. When a new lead lands in Salesforce, Warm Referral reads it, cross-references the account's org chart and each stakeholder's work history, and surfaces the warmest path in — through a Chrome extension that overlays directly on Salesforce or LinkedIn. A rep picks a path, and the system drafts and sends the referral ask by email or Slack. Once the connector responds, the referral gets added straight into the rep's lead list.
Mutual Success Plan Pivoted away
Chrome extension for reps Shipped → revenue
Warm Referral engine Now core product
Evidence
account scoring
Every target account scored and ranked automatically — ICP grade, overall score, referral count, all computed.
account detail · contacts
Drill into any account and every contact is scored the same way — decision level, referral strength, location, all pulled automatically.
org chart · pulled automatically
Full org chart per account, pulled automatically once the CRM is connected — no manual mapping.
chrome extension · linkedin overlay
The same account intelligence follows reps onto LinkedIn — Boomerangs and Customer Advocates surfaced without leaving the page.
account 360 · referral relationships
The moment a lead lands, the system surfaces who's already connected — tagged for ICP fit, recently hired, and past buyers.
the automated ask
One click drafts and sends the referral request — the connector just has to say yes.
slack digest
Reps get warm paths delivered daily in Slack — no need to open the CRM to find one.
Outcome
60%
less manual research time per rep
35%
higher outreach success via warm paths
2.5 wks
shorter average account penetration
The warm-intro product is now Boomerang's core offering — live today at getboomerang.ai, used by enterprise clients including Armis, a $300M-ARR cybersecurity company.
Reflection
Strategy is deciding what not to build. Questioning the roadmap before designing for it felt uncomfortable at first — it wasn't my job on paper. It became the highest-leverage thing I did there.