About Richard Baldwin
AI-Driven Product Manager | Developer | Startup Executive
My journey into product management started before I even knew the term. In 2008, as a newly nominated voter for the Philadelphia Barrymore Awards, I listened as the project head described how she managed ballots and tabulated results—using dozens of spreadsheets and 20 hours of manual work per week. As a newly minted PHP and SQL developer, I saw a better way. Over three months, I worked closely with her to define requirements, scope solutions, and build a custom web app that automated the process and saved hours of effort.
Since then, I’ve built and scaled that leverage AI, automation, machine learning, and data insights to transform industries. At Joyous, I led the development of:
- An AI-powered restaurant health dashboard, using sentiment analysis and customer data to provide real-time business insights.
- Automated marketing and content generation with OpenAI and Leonardo.ai, enabling small restaurants to scale their reach.
- A consumer engagement feature, the Daily Quiz, which doubled daily in-app engagement using AI-generated food trivia.
- A restaurant onboarding web app, streamlining adoption through AI-powered automation.
Beyond Joyous, I’ve developed AI-first solutions across industries, from an LLM-powered developer tool that enhances software project context to a daily financial news generator for a fictional economy. My work blends technical expertise, business strategy, user-centric design, and extremely creative thinking to deliver impactful products.
My experience spans startups, enterprise, and nonprofits. At AppFog, I helped scale the company from 3 employees to 60K users and secured $9.8M in venture funding. At Sightbox, I built a 32-person team, increased NPS by 50+ points, and streamlined operations to improve customer experience.
With expertise in React Native, Rails, Next.js, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, Python, and APIs like OpenAI, Stripe, and Twilio, I bridge the gap between technology and business. I believe in automating what computers do best so that people can focus on what truly matters—innovation, connection, and solving meaningful problems.