# HM Interview with Bryan Licas (CPO) — 2026-04-09

## Format
- ~30 min video call
- Conversational, curiosity-driven — Bryan followed threads rather than running a checklist
- Bryan clearly did his homework (LinkedIn, Northeastern post, ProductBC)
- Natural flow, Andrea brought personality and genuine enthusiasm

## Andrea's Introduction

Walked through Ting progression:
1. **DX / Website** — frontend redesign, talked to customers directly (before UX research team existed). Called customers sourced through support: longest complainers, recent signups, people with interesting questions. Later partnered with UX research team for prototype testing and customer expectations research.
2. **Internal Platform / Backend** — event-driven Kafka platform, understanding data flows across systems
3. **Customer Migration** — company had acquired multiple businesses, so multiple CRMs and billing systems. First half was structured consumer migration: building migration scripts from legacy systems to new platform. Worked with platform vendors (formerly same company, now spun out) to understand data models, origins, classification, and mapping to new schemas.

Bryan was very interested in the migration work and probed on how it was done.

## Topics Bryan Explored

### ProductBC
- Saw it on LinkedIn, asked about it
- Andrea: elected board member last summer, volunteers for conferences, speaks at workshops, giving back to the community since 2020
- Bryan: "seems quite cool"
- Andrea: "I enjoy being a part of this community — I like product people because we are all interesting and smart"

### AI at Traction Complete
- **OpenClaw** personal assistant set up via Slack for execs
- CTO helping beef up security around AI tooling
- Devs get **Claude Code**
- Bryan himself has AI-supported processes — described as "game-changing"
- Active LLM use and agentic workflows across the org
- **For this role specifically:** must understand AI and be comfortable talking to customers

### Startup Culture
- ~100 people, not a startup anymore but still has startup vibes in culture
- **Processes have matured** — shouldn't worry about messy processes
- Looking for self-starters who take initiative ("just pick up the phone")

### LalaMove Experience
- Andrea brought up LalaMove as scale-up experience: started at ~50 people (Series B), left when thousands of employees across multiple markets
- Mentioned cross-market collaboration — adopting processes from other markets when they fit
- Quick title/role progression: marketing → operations management → strategic lead

### Entrepreneurship (Creatology)
- Bryan asked about it from LinkedIn
- Andrea: moved to Toronto fresh from Hong Kong, interested in startup world, met co-founder for fertility device
- Prototype was a BBT (basal body temperature) device — **Bryan knew about BBT**, asked if that's what it was based on
- Key differentiator: inserted rather than surface wearable = higher accuracy + ability to track internal fluids
- Accepted to **Communitech Fierce Founders Bootcamp**
- Ended because: medical device regulations + certification challenges + ran out of runway

### AI at Ting
- Bryan asked if Andrea brought in LLM-assisted workflows at Ting
- Andrea: LLMs were still unsteady/unreliable at that time, not officially adopted yet
- Was on the **AI Council**, supported first policy and manifesto for working with AIs
- On the IS team before leaving — was exploring enterprise contracts for LLM/GenAI tools
- Mentioned it was too bad she didn't get to use it at work, but has been tinkering on parental leave

### Andrea's AI Projects
- Bryan asked about specific projects
- Andrea mentioned **saga.cc** and explained what it is and how she built it
- Mentioned using **Claude Code** extensively
- Also mentioned using Claude to build the interview prep cheat sheet for TC products — Bryan seemed impressed

## Questions Andrea Asked

### How are the PM roles defined across the 5 products?
- Currently 2 PMs, this is backfill for 3rd
- **5 products currently** — Bryan wants to hire more PMs in next 12 months
- Ideal: **one PM per product**, plus hiring one new UI/UX designer
- Caveat: products have **a lot of crossover and are deeply interrelated** — hard to draw clean boundaries
- Direction is clear: 1 PM per product

### Who is the customer persona?
- RevOps teams from orgs of a certain size (~1,000+ employees)
- Typically in technology industry
- **Buyers and users are sometimes the same person**
- Most commonly: **Directors or VP-level** people tasked with cleaning up data for sales/revenue teams — they initiate conversations
- Actual product users (revenue/sales teams) also critically important to talk to

### What changed from the previous role?
- Previous PM was more of a **product owner** — working closely with devs, setting up tickets and processes
- They hired a **scrum master** who absorbed that work
- Previous PM was **not comfortable speaking with customers**
- New role: must be comfortable talking to customers + doing PM work that informs a better roadmap

### Relationship between product and frontline teams (CS, support, sales)?
- **All roll up to Bryan** — tight-knit connection
- Bryan came from CS background so keeps those threads intertwined with product

### How is product involved in the sales cycle?
- Roadmap informs sales
- PMs **rarely jump on sales calls** with prospects — occasional but not typical
- **Arm's length relationship** — intentional, so they don't build for one customer only

### What are the new opportunities?
- **Vertical expansion beyond tech** — tech companies struggling right now
- Target: non-profits, hospitality — orgs with lots of messy data
- Definite growth opportunity

### Current roadmap direction?
- More integrations with LLM/agentic workflows
- Supporting the feedback loop: customers using agentic workflows → how that improves the product → what value customers get

## What Landed Well
- Migration story — Bryan probed deep, clearly resonated
- Direct customer outreach (picking up the phone, calling customers before UX research team existed)
- AI fluency — saga.cc, Claude Code, using Claude for interview prep, AI Council work
- LalaMove scale-up trajectory
- ProductBC community involvement
- Overall energy: light, genuine, personality-forward

## Key Intel for Next Rounds

- **Role is clearly PM, not PO** — discovery, roadmap, customer conversations. Scrum master handles process.
- **1 PM per product is the target** — you'd own one of the 5 products (likely inheriting the departing PM's product)
- **Products are deeply interrelated** — expect cross-product coordination
- **Customer persona:** Director/VP-level RevOps at 1,000+ employee orgs, mostly tech (expanding to non-profits, hospitality)
- **AI is a real strategic priority** — roadmap is pointing toward LLM integrations and agentic workflows
- **Bryan owns product, CS, support, and sales** — unusual scope, means tight feedback loop but also means Bryan is stretched
- **Sales involvement is arm's length by design** — won't be pulled into prospect calls regularly
- **Bryan values:** self-starters, customer comfort, AI fluency, initiative

## Andrea's Read
- Very naturally flowing conversation, curiosity-driven on both sides
- Bryan did his homework; Andrea did hers
- Felt really good coming out of it
- Expressed genuine enthusiasm about migration work — "the confluence of talking to people, understanding their problems, but also structuring data and getting data clean"

## Next Steps
- **Karen to reach out by end of day Apr 10** to confirm if advancing to demo/case study round
- If advancing: material provided 1 week in advance, present to Bryan + CTO Ernesto V. + possibly Scott Wilton

## Private Notes
- Bryan asked about start date again (already covered with Karen as ASAP). Possibly probing for competing offers.
- **Timing consideration:** family likely traveling to Hungary in May for a few months. Not disclosed to TC. Plan: disclose at offer stage, not during interview process. Interview timeline should naturally reach offer stage around early May, at which point Hungary dates will be clearer and can negotiate start date or remote arrangements.