●Sparker Email
Hi, I’m Brian.
Product leader & builder.

Sparker

I help teams turn fuzzy ideas and new technology into useful products people actually want. Most of my work lives around AI, search, and developer tools.

Day job
Staff Product Manager
You.com
10× Monthly users as You.com made chat the main experience
7-fig. ROI in the first month after a new search platform launched
+145% More buyer engagement year over year at G2
01 / Work

A few things I’m proud of.

Three messy product problems, what we changed, and what happened next.

01
You.com / AI search

Making search feel more like a conversation.

You.com began as a traditional search engine with a layer of AI tools. Research made the opportunity clear: people wanted to ask follow-ups and shape their intent in conversation. I led the move to a chat-first experience with answers grounded in sources.

Open the product notes
SignalPeople wanted direct answers and an easy way to keep refining what they meant.
DecisionBring the prompt, answer, sources, and conversational context into one clear experience.
ResultChat became the product’s main experience and its direction going forward.
1M → 10MMonthly users as chat became the main experience
The You.com conversational AI search interface Shipped interface / You.com
02
Crate & Barrel / Search infrastructure

Fixing the messy plumbing behind search.

Crate & Barrel’s search, inventory, and product data didn’t always agree. That made discovery frustrating for shoppers and expensive for the business. I led the rebuild underneath it all so the same trustworthy information powered every channel.

Open the product notes
SignalShoppers were seeing conflicting product and inventory information depending on where they looked.
DecisionBuild one reliable search foundation for every brand and channel.
ResultMore consistent discovery, more accurate fulfillment, and less manual cleanup.
7 figuresROI delivered in the first 30 days after launch
Crate & Barrel ecommerce search interface Commerce search / Crate & Barrel
03
G2 / Marketplace discovery

Helping buyers feel confident about a choice.

G2’s buyers had plenty of software options. The harder part was knowing which one was right. I owned the search roadmap across ranking, personalization, recommendations, and AI-powered guidance.

Open the product notes
SignalMore choices weren’t enough; buyers needed a clearer path through them.
DecisionMake search, recommendations, and AI guidance feel like one connected buying journey.
ResultBuyers explored categories and compared products with more confidence.
+145%Year-over-year increase in core buyer engagement
G2 marketplace search interface Buyer discovery / G2
02 / Side projects

I’m usually building something.

Small tools, open standards, and one delightfully strange art project. Building is how I learn.

01EternalA self-betraying gallery that mints and discards one-of-one browser art.Generative art↗ 02Favorite BlueAn endless living color study that slowly wanders through shades of blue.Interactive study↗ 03SuperPasteContext-aware writing for macOS, triggered with a single hotkey.AI product↗ 04frugal.shRoutes AI work to the cheapest reliable toolchain.Developer tool↗ 05you.mdA portable standard for preferences across AI assistants.Open standard↗ 06PromptLensA systematic evaluation framework for LLM prompts.LLM evaluation↗ 07LabelMergePrivate mail merge that runs entirely inside the browser.Privacy tool↗
03 / How I think

Three ideas I keep coming back to.

Nothing fancy—just the standards I use to decide whether something is worth shipping.

01 / Good

Good should show up.

People should feel the value, reach it without a fight, and come back because they want to.

02 / Products

A product should make something better.

Features are the parts. The product is the change a customer can actually feel.

03 / End users

People always have a choice.

Build something useful enough that people choose it again, even when they have other options.

04 / About

Big-picture thinker. Still likes to build.

Brian Sparker

I’m Brian—a product leader who likes the messy middle, where new technology, user behavior, and business reality all bump into each other. I’m happiest turning a fuzzy idea into a clear plan, helping a team ship it, and staying close enough to the details to know if it actually works. I’ve spent most of my career around AI, search, growth, pricing, and developer tools. The common thread is simple: make complicated things genuinely useful.

CurrentStaff Product Manager
You.com
EducationMBA
Boston University
ElsewhereGitHub / LinkedIn
Resume / Email