Player profile
I like solving people's problems.
I started in a grocery store and ended up building AI tools for the people inside a company. Every stop along the way was about the same thing: helping people do their jobs better.
- VP of Product Marketing & Community
- Rancho Santa Margarita, CA
- Little League coach
Chris Rader
VP of Product Marketing & Community, Centercode
The long way here.
Five chapters. Each one left me with something I still use.
Chapter 1
A grocery store
I started out running a department at Sprouts: budgets, scheduling, the works.
- Budgets
- Scheduling
Chapter 2
Western Digital
I helped start the user research function and taught engineers how to watch real people use a product.
- User research
- Teaching
Chapter 3 · 11 years
Centercode, analyst to VP
I joined as a research analyst, then moved into services, then product, then marketing. I've been VP of Product Marketing & Community since 2022. Knowing the product, the market and how to explain both pulled me into almost every part of the business, and most of my time went to sales: pitch decks, solutions consulting, the deal desk and coaching reviews.
- Services
- Product
- Marketing
- Sales
Chapter 4 · End of 2022
Then GPT showed up
I felt what I felt about the Internet as a kid. I got our CEO using AI, rolled it out across the company with our People team, and now build the AI tools our sales and marketing teams use. Coding agents do most of the coding. I decide what's worth building, set the rules and check the work.
- AI rollout
- Coding agents
Off the clock
Rancho Santa Margarita
I coach Little League and girls' softball, sit on my league's board, and help host AI Tinkerers Orange County events. I built my first computer at eight and never really stopped.
- Coaching
- Community
Player stats.
11
Years at Centercode
4
Roles there, analyst to VP
2022
Building with AI since
Age 8
Building my own computers since
Inventory
57 items · 8 bags
Workbench
Terminal
Where most of the building happens. Agents run here.
Slot 1/57 · equipped
This site is built on part of it. Coding agents write most of the code. I set the scope and review the work.
House rules.
Six things that shape how I build and how I work with a team.
- 01
Rule 1/6
The limit is human, not AI.
Most teams don't lack tools. They lack the time and the reps to use them well. Closing that gap is most of the job.
- 02
Rule 2/6
AI is not easy. Good results take reps.
Anyone telling you it's plug-and-play is selling something. It's a skill, and I've been putting in the reps every day since 2022.
- 03
Rule 3/6
Show your work.
I'd rather say plainly what's been tested and what hasn't. That's how people learn to trust what you build.
- 04
Rule 4/6
Time back is the real ROI.
The deepest win isn't a dashboard. It's the hour a rep didn't spend digging through the CRM, spent with a customer instead.
- 05
Rule 5/6
Hire the robots for the robot work.
Scheduling, follow-ups, reporting and data cleanup. Hand that to agents and let people do the parts customers actually care about.
- 06
Rule 6/6
Connect, don't chase.
Whether it's a customer, a coworker or a tool, the job isn't to push it on everyone. It's to get it in front of the people who actually have the problem it solves.