I’m Brandon.
I’m a product leader and indie musician, tinkerer, occasional writer and dad based central Massachusetts, US. I release music as Kid Lightbulbs. This is my site.
I’m passionate about finding & making great music, social technology, and using those tools to foster independent and sustainable careers in music & art.
More about me
Product 🏗️
I’ve worked as a product manager and leader for 11+ years in several startups and a few big pre-IPO and public tech companies, mostly around Boston, USA. I pride myself on having tackled highly complex problems in a variety of industries and focus areas, including consumer & enterprise SaaS, food & furniture delivery, immersive 3D experiences, and the music business.
I currently work for Buffer, an online social marketing SaaS, as a Staff Product Manager.
In my (extremely limited) spare time, I mentor current and aspiring product managers, specializing in those experiencing burnout or at crossroads within their careers. I am not taking on new mentees at the moment, but if you’re interested in a chat, feel free to drop me an email.
Music 🤘
I’m an out-of-practice classically-trained pianist who now writes and produces music as Kid Lightbulbs, which you can listen to on my Bandcamp site.
I won a few awards for piano performance as a kid. During my teens, I taught myself bass, guitar, trombone, tuba, and now I dabble with software. While in music school at Northeastern University, I composed modern avant-garde music, including a Theme & Variations piece for solo 5-string bass and live electronics. I’ve played in an instrumental prog metal group (now known as Earthside), in a Talking Heads tribute band, and alongside noted singer-songwriters and DJs.
All to say: my influences and tastes are broad but also in some ways very specific. Through all that, I’ve always had a deep love for music theory as (1) a set of rules to break and (2) a framework for understanding why I love the music that I do. I use this space to explore that alongside my other love, social technology (which I’m enormously privileged to work in as a product lead at Buffer).
Writing ✍️
I aspire to write a lot, but I only get an opportunity to every so often. Most of what I’ve written is available on this site, and I plan to post more here over time.
Here are some essays I’m proud of:
- On Prince’s “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker”
- Earworms
- Liberal arts and the jobs of 2030
- Where we’re going, there are a million roads
I have 2 or 3 long-form writing ideas, including a speculative fiction novel and a playbook around working remotely as a product leader. Maybe I’ll get around to those at some point 😬
Alicia & Talia 🥰
Alicia and I met online in 2011, started dating seriously in 2012, and got married in 2016. We’ve now known each other for more than 1/3 of our lives, and we’ve been through a ridiculous amount together: seven different places we’ve lived together, a stint in Berlin just eight months after our wedding, job/career crises, chronic disease, artistic collaboration, probably other things.
Alicia is an artist — photographer, designer, craftsperson — and her stuff is mostly online here.
Talia is our daughter who was born in March 2021. She is a highly sensitive bundle of joy, and most of what I do is in her best interest at this point.
Me on the internet
This site is built with Blot in plain text and Markdown, hosted in a private Dropbox folder.
- I use Counter for site analytics.
- I use Bandcamp to host my music, though I’m exploring other options.
- You can most often find me posting and conversing on Threads, though I also sometimes post about product work on LinkedIn.