Craig Drayton is the Client Product Manager here at Wave Digital. He has spent many years leading and building new digital products, and loves using this experience to help clients avoid common pitfalls and accelerate their apps down the path to success. Learn more about his journey from software consulting, to startups to Wave.
Can you tell us about your role with Wave – what challenges do you help clients to solve?
My role is to help our clients shape their knowledge and ideas into the most promising product possible - and then work with the Wave team to make that product a reality.
What drives and inspires you in your work with Wave?
With software almost anything is possible, which is both a blessing and a curse! I love working with clients on their ideas in the early discovery and design phases, when changes are still easy and cheap. A small amount of work here goes a long way to improving the odds of success - sometimes a single insight can completely change the path of a product for the better.
Is there something on the horizon with Wave that you’re excited about?
More and more we're seeing clients interested in product discovery - a lightweight research process that helps improve the clarity and confidence behind a product idea. This is exciting because event discovery is such a high impact activity, but it has traditionally been hard for some clients to understand and value it.
Looking back, are there any professional and life experiences that led you to this career? How did you get to where you are today?
Not long into a career in software consulting, I noticed an opportunity and founded a SaaS analytics startup called Mazzlo. I was a solo founder without venture funding, so I had to learn all the skills the business needed to reach and support demanding enterprise clients. I really loved the intense challenge, variety and focus of early startup life, so when I decided to wrap up Mazzlo I stuck around in the startup scene in Melbourne.
Later I joined Wave as an opportunity to focus on my favourite part of the journey, the ‘zero-to-one’ experience of developing new products and businesses. I've accumulated lots of hard-won lessons from both corporate and startup life, and it's great being able to share this experience with clients and help them bypass some of the common traps and mistakes along the way.
How do you like to spend your time when you’re not developing apps with Wave?
After 9 years living in Melbourne, I recently moved back to my hometown (Wellington, New Zealand), where I live with my partner and two kids. I'm sceptical of the typical Victorian's claims to ‘be having a terrible winter’ when we're dealing with the infamous 130km/h gusts!
I really enjoy rock climbing as a great mental and physical challenge as well as the fun problem solving aspect. I get out to the climbing gym at least a couple of times a week, but I was also lucky enough to get to climb outdoors in the incredible Grampians National Park while I was still in Victoria.
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