About

I learned product management by operating, selling, and building.

My path includes an assembly line, small businesses, engineering, customer work, and end-to-end product management.

Portrait of Mike Ketabforoosh

Who I am

I did not arrive in product management through one straight path.

I am a senior product manager working on complex B2B products. My job is to understand what needs solving and work across customers, sales, customer success, design, engineering, and marketing from early discovery through launch and adoption.

One of my first side jobs was on a printer-cartridge assembly line during my junior year at university. A friend and I saw a gap between the source and buyers, so we bought cartridges in bulk and sold them directly to universities and companies. I did not know the language of direct-to-customer business at the time. I learned that improving distribution can change the value of an otherwise ordinary product.

I later managed IT for a pharmacy business, opened a neighborhood mobile shop, operated data centers, troubleshot complex software, advised enterprise customers, and led technical teams. I brought those experiences into product roles across SaaS, platforms, pricing, portfolio coordination, and AI-related work.

My journey in the United States began when I moved to California and rebuilt my career from the ground up. It made me comfortable learning in public, asking basic questions, and working through uncertainty without pretending to have every answer.

I continue to build outside my day job because doing the work changes how I operate as a product manager. Joberney gave me practical experience with prototypes, pricing, SEO, distribution, analytics, and market language. Building KindnessSender with AI taught me to create realistic prototypes sooner, automate checks, reproduce problems, and communicate with engineers more precisely. Beadelais teaching me how to decompose a mathematically difficult image problem, define measurable stages, and test edge cases. These projects help me gather customer feedback earlier, file better bugs, write clearer product narratives, and bring more practical judgment to pricing, launch, and distribution decisions in my day job.

I completed an MBA while raising a young family. It added formal training in markets, economics, and organizations to the technical and operating experience I already had.

Formal education

Business training on top of a technical foundation.

Engineering taught me how systems behave. Business school added a more structured way to think about markets, economics, organizations, and growth.

  • Master of Business Administration (MBA)Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 2021 to 2023
  • B.S., Electrical Engineering (Electronics)Iran Azad University, Tehran, 2007 to 2009
  • Associate Degree, Electrical Engineering (Electronics)Sadra Institute of Higher Education, Tehran, 2004 to 2006

Writing and sharing

Other ways I learn from people and ideas.

Writing, podcasting, and small product experiments help me clarify what I think and learn from people outside my immediate work.

Podcast

Driven by a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship, I started EspressoTaSobh, which means "espresso till morning," to share the stories of successful businesses with other immigrants in Farsi, my native language.

Personal writing

Selected product writing