I build tools that help people do their jobs better.
I'm VP of Product Marketing & Community at Centercode. I joined eleven years ago as a research analyst and worked my way up. My roots are in user research and product management, and what I like most is building things and helping people do their jobs better. These days that means AI tools our own people use every day, built with coding agents and a person in charge of anything that ships.
Chris Rader
VP of Product Marketing & Community, Centercode
A product person who ended up everywhere.
Knowing the product, the market and how to explain both pulled me into nearly every part of the business. Brands like Google, Amazon, Bose and Autodesk use Centercode to test products with real customers before launch, and my job has mostly been getting that value through sales to customers and prospects. The longer story
- 14+ yrs
- in business: QA, user research, market research and more
- 10 yrs
- in product, from product manager to VP
- 35+
- working builds since 2022, big and small
- 700+
- members in the communities I built
Selected work.
AI tools for the people inside a company, the guardrails around them, and the work of getting everyone to use them. Each one says what it does and what it taught me.
Getting a whole company using AI
Got our CEO using AI first, then worked with our People team on the rollout: training, real use cases, internal hackathons, and a new goal system used in performance reviews. I sit on the AI council that runs training and quality reviews.
> taught me: The tools are the easy part. New habits are the real work.
An agent platform with a person in charge
A prototype that lets employees on any team build their own agents. It connects to company systems through 11 connectors (called MCP servers), keeps reading and editing the CRM on separate keys, has a wizard so non-engineers can build skills, and locks each person's data down in the database. I wrote the strategy for our CEO and CTO.
> taught me: The model proposes, code enforces, a person approves.
A HubSpot skill our leaders and reps actually use
Sales leaders and reps pull CRM data through Claude and ChatGPT in plain language. The skill carries a glossary of how our HubSpot fields connect, so an answer never counts a closed-lost deal as a churned customer.
> taught me: An agent is only as good as the definitions you give it.
Sales intelligence from discovery calls
Reads discovery call transcripts to learn how buyers heard about us and what they already knew. Sales gets weekly findings, lookalike prospects and outreach lists. A public version turns calls into account timelines and coaching reports, and checks every quote against the transcript.
> taught me: Reps trust AI output when they can check it against the source.
Rules our content agents can't skip
Every draft is scored against a 100-point rubric with 12 automatic fails, inside a 15-stage workflow the AI can't skip ahead in, and a person approves before anything goes out.
> taught me: Checks belong in code, where nobody can talk them out of it.
Every page audited for Google and AI search
Audited all 1,084 URLs on centercode.com and scripted the fixes through the Webflow API: new or trimmed titles and meta descriptions on 440+ posts, 77 new internal links, a comparisons hub and glossary cleanup. Each batch is tracked against a baseline snapshot in GA4 and Search Console.
> taught me: Write down the baseline before you change anything, or you'll never know what worked.
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How I think about AI at work.
Agents get more powerful with each layer you give them. Context helps them understand the work, tools let them get it done, and validation makes that work better.
Power-up 1/3
Context makes it useful.
An agent is only as good as what it knows. Clear definitions, the right documents and real CRM data do more than a clever prompt.
Power-up 2/3
Tools get the work done.
Connect it to the systems people already use, like the CRM, email and analytics, with clear limits on what it can touch. Then it can finish a task instead of describing one.
Power-up 3/3
Validation makes the work better.
Checks written in code, tests that have to pass, and a person who approves anything before it reaches a customer. That's how the quality gets good enough to trust.
Where I've worked.
Sep 2022 to now
VP of Product Marketing & Community · Centercode
Lead product marketing, community, sales enablement and pricing, and run annual planning with the CEO and finance. Most of my own hours go to hands-on building: AI tools our leaders and reps use daily, an agent platform prototype for employees, and the company's AI rollout with our People team.
Jun 2019 to Sep 2022
Product Director · Centercode
Led product strategy and delivery for the SaaS platform and acted as our expert on the market and product: customer programs, ROI evaluations, escalations, and our early AI and machine learning features. Also handled solutions consulting and the deal desk.
Sep 2016 to Jun 2019
Product Manager, Services · Centercode
Interviewed every internal team and reviewed hundreds of past projects, then rebuilt our services around research and customer ROI with new processes, SOPs and training. Doubled pricing and ran validation programs for Nest, Tableau, Bose and Dish Network.
Sep 2015 to Sep 2016
Product Marketing Research Analyst · Centercode
Ran the research behind our product marketing: surveys, customer interviews, usability studies and secondary research. A smart home journalist interviewed me about our smart home product surveys.
2012 to 2015
User Researcher · Western Digital
Helped start the user research function across 3 product lines and trained engineers and technicians in usability testing.
Outside the day job.
I build for local businesses, my church, my kids' league and for the fun of it. It's how I stay close to what the tools can really do.
A field crew's whole day, in one system
In production for a home-services company: online booking, drag and drop dispatch, signed agreements, Stripe invoicing, Twilio texts, and a native technician app for the truck.
> taught me: Field software has to work with zero bars and wet hands.
A brokerage site where the brand is law
An audit-first rebuild: compliance checks, image treatment, listing sites at scale, data feeds that turn into content.
> taught me: Scale is a system. One source of truth feeds every page, post, and video.
AI that grades auto-shop inspections
Every inspection scored on five dimensions, with findings that cite their sources. The owner reviews everything without reading everything.
> taught me: Trustworthy AI shows receipts. Good engineering makes it cost pennies.
Video and voice, written like software
Remotion and Hyperframes render video from code, ElevenLabs speaks the narration, and an animated year-in-review ties it together.
> taught me: Media can be data-driven, versioned, and always on brand.
A batting practice app for kids, built around dinosaurs
It turns an iPhone into an exit-velocity tracker, so young hitters see their progress the second the bat cracks.
> taught me: The phone in your pocket can do lab work now.
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Good things start with a conversation.
I love talking with people, so I make a point of helping those conversations happen. I work with AI Tinkerers Orange County and Orange County Product to bring local people together at events, usually 30 to 100 people a night. I've also led sponsorships for those events and for Product Leader Summit, and built three professional communities, two with more than 700 members.
Hosting Centercode's podcast (The Delta Huddle, later Launch With Confidence) was my way to sit down with people at other companies and learn how they build and validate products. It was awesome. I've also spoken at Product School, our customer conference and local AI groups.