Product Thinking

Sean Wilson has a strong background in product thinking. He has designed, developed and delivered a wide range of products and services with clear value propositions, robust operating models and scalable architecture. Ensuring growth does not dilute clarity, customer experience or quality standards. 

His experience spans both digital and tangible products, from online HR technology to retail building industry shop fronts, online and digital advertising to face to face, phone and digital advisory services; online and in person training and events, full time and casual staffing and recruitment; online and retail luxury and recreattional marine sales and service to NDIS support, and related service models.

He has led multiple end-to-end product builds and transformations across B2B SaaS and digital platforms, often within founder-led or scale-up environments where product quality is a primary enterprise value driver. His work typically involves translating ambitious vision into coherent product strategy, establishing the operating systems that protect quality at scale, and remaining closely involved in critical decisions as complexity increases.

In practice, this has included ownership of product vision and roadmap, structured customer discovery, UX and experience direction, and hands-on collaboration with design and engineering teams through delivery and iteration.

Sean approaches product development through a design-led lens. He is comfortable making high-stakes product and UX decisions, defining experience principles, and ensuring products exhibit clarity, usability and disciplined aesthetic judgment. He has overseen the development of product frameworks and design systems that enable velocity without fragmentation or unnecessary process overhead.

He brings deep B2B SaaS expertise, including multi-tenant platform architecture, full product lifecycle ownership from ideation to optimisation, and rigorous cross-functional alignment across engineering, sales and marketing. He has recruited and led high-performing product and technology teams, aligning them around clear intent, commercial outcomes and user value rather than feature volume.

Proven Product Development Expertise

As Chief Technology & Product Officer of a HR SaaS business (BetterHR) for over 10 years, Sean personally led the rebuild of the core platform and mobile product. His work included customer discovery, product framing, UX direction, prioritisation, and close collaboration with design and engineering. He's comfortable making hard product calls, balancing taste with scale, and ensuring the product remains coherent as complexity increases. The outcome was stronger adoption, improved retention, and over 250% enterprise value growth. He achieved major shareholding due to his contributions. Successful exit in 2024.

He earned significant equity ownership through value creation and led buyer narrative for a successful exit (2024).

During his time at BetterHR, he completed over 50 SaaS development projects. Including:

1. Complete redesign and rebuild to improve stability, speed, and structure for scalability/growth. 

2. Integrated white labelling, etc.

3. Over 100 new features (eg. Integrated white-labelling, Compliance Register, Activity Tracker, Company Records, 10 new Personnel File tabs, more HR processes, more document templates, Dashboard HR news, etc).

4. Brand refresh (Parent and child logos, website, etc)

5. Added 2 new subscription levels (HR Lite & HR Platinum) + Optional ‘At Cost’ Services (Phase 1 – HR Shop).

6. New Compliance Register.

7.  New Value Tracker – showing value users get from their subscription

8. New Company Files – for improved records management.

9. New Documents Library – for letters, forms, policies, etc.

10. Updated Personnel Files – with over 10 new tabs.

11. Updated HR Records Management.

12. Updated Law Guides.

13. Updated Contract Wizard.

14. Updated Notes.

15. Updated Alerts.

16. Updated Users Management.

17. Rebrand: Changed ‘ER Expertise’ to ‘HR Advice Online/HR Advice Hotline’.

18. Launched new advice forms: Modern Award Coverage, Pay Rate Enquiries, etc (HR Essential & HR Professional).

19. Launched new service for key advisors (HR Advice Online for Clients).

20. Started automating customer care (NetSuite Case Management, Renewal Reminder Notices, etc).

21. New HR Advice Online Service for Key Advisors.

22. Case Automation (Customer Care, HR Advice, HR Consulting & Sales).

23. New Safety Section.

24. Step by step safety processes (5).

25. New safety registers (4).

26. Safety Document Templates.

27. MAJOR CONTENT REBUILD.

28. Complete rewrite of processes. Move from simple linear processes to dynamic flowcharts.

29. Further automation of advice services to improve efficiency & reduce costs.

30. Added over 30 new step by step HR Process Flowcharts with links to relevant HR tools and advice.

31. New Dynamic HR Process Flowcharts.

32. New Risk Meter (Live reading on dashboard).

33. New Risk Meter – Compliance Register.

34. New Risk Meter – Personnel Files.

35. New Menus - for improved navigation.

36. Launched ‘HR On-Demand: Pay-As-You-Go Service’ (Phase 2 of HR Shop).

37. Improved value of HR Platinum subscription by adding ‘Outsourced HR Services’.

38. HR Registers.

39. Timesheets Register.

40. New ‘Employee HR Portal’ added.

41. Self-service features for employees.

42. Employee Portal Access Management.

43. Complete redesign and rebuild to improve user experience across new devices (eg. laptop, mobile, tablet).

44. New Personnel Files.

45. New Personnel Files – Personal Details.

46. New Personnel Files – HR Best Practice & Compliance.

47. New Personnel Files – Job Details.

48. New Personnel Files – Payroll > Pay Rates.

49. New Personnel Files – Records > Files Uploaded.

50. New Personnel Files – Right to Work Checks.

51. New Personnel Files – Performance Management.

52. New Personnel Files – Activity History.

53. New Dashboard (Employee HR Portal).

54. New Dashboard (HR Advice Online).

55. Moved to new servers to improve speed, systems/data integrity and achieve cost efficiencies.

56. New Import / Export Data Wizard .

57. New People Files Register LONG (Export > update > import).

58. Improved HR Registers (Timesheets, Leave, Police Checks).

59. New dynamic Letters Wizard.

60. Improved HR Registers (Right to Work, Performance, etc).

61. New Roster Register (Interactive calendar view of timesheets and leave).

62. Admin upgrade to improve controls and meet new payroll compliance law changes.

63. New payroll features (Updated personnel files, etc).

64. New payroll registers.

65. New pay-runs for wages, salaries, allowances.

66. New admin controls: Payroll Access.

67. New mobile app for employees – Apple.

68. New mobile app for employees – Android.

69. New Tasks Management.

70. New Covid (now Disasters Toolkit) section.

71. Rebranded to BetterHR.

72. New employee vaccination tracker.

73. Security Improvements – Updated all code.

74. Added 2-factor authentication.

75. New Job Vacancies Register.

76. New Jobs Display (like Seek).

77. Job Application Form.

78. Job Applications Register.