Zach Dunn

I’m a product leader and repeat tech startup founder, based in Boston.

I co-founded Robin with my twin brother Sam, and spent nearly a decade there — first as CPO building the product from the ground up, then running the customer organization as the company scaled.

Most recently, I led product and AI at Rally, where I was part of the founding team.

I build B2B products from zero to scale. I like being hands-on in the codebase and with customers at the same time. Lately that’s an obsession with AI as a multiplier for teams willing to move fast and aim high.

In the margins, I’m also reviving Either, the viral “would you rather” game from the 2010s that grew to a billion-plus answers.

• @zachdunn
• @zachdunn
• in/zachdunn
• /resume

Small, useful infrastructure I’m building in the open for agents.

Press

Featured in the NYT, WSJ, NPR, and CNBC on hybrid work and return-to-office. Selected coverage:

• NYT The Rules for Hybrid Work Were Always Made Up
• WSJ You’re Going Back to the Office. Here’s What Your Day Might Look Like
• NYT The End of a Return-to-Office Date
• NYT Dealbook D.C. Policy Forum 2022

Writing

Things I’ve written about building products and startups that still hold up:

• 10 lessons from a decade at Robin An excerpt from the farewell memo I sent to Robin, with ten lessons from a decade as co-founder.
• Why product expertise might be hurting your go-to-market team A memo I sent to Robin when we hit 200 people, on why deep feature knowledge can quietly make your GTM team worse.
• How to say no to feature requests without becoming the villain On the difference between a decision and a delay, and why customers can tell which one you’re giving them.
• Why product teams overestimate revenue from sales feedback Four ways “we lost a $100K deal” stories lead you astray.
• How to make (and present) a better customer roadmap How to find a sticky narrative when presenting your product roadmap to customers.
• How designing an invisible app almost killed us Lessons from building automation products that give useful feedback without getting in the way.
• In product development, you have to unbreak before you can invent Why early product development is often about earning the right to ship the ambitious parts.
• Lies, damned lies, and startup advice How founders can separate useful feedback from reasonable-sounding distractions.
• What’s hard today is temporary Why today’s technology costs shouldn’t disqualify ideas built for the future.