Senior Product Manager · Toronto
I'm a Senior PM based in Toronto. I've shipped products in multiple industries including social media, healthcare, heavily regulated supply-chain software, food operations software, and D2C retail. The contexts look different, but the actual problems — user adoption, competitor pressure, regulatory fog, constant prioritization under uncertainty — show up time and time again. Once you've seen the pattern enough times, you can focus on the craft of good product strategy and delivery.
I've been building AI-powered products since 2023 — ML-curated content feeds at 500px, LLM-integrated decision tools, and ML Forecasting Models for enterprise food operators. I'm outcome-driven, not output-driven. Code is cheaper than ever. What you choose to build is the whole game. I do my best work on small teams with clear ownership, leadership that's still close to the work, and a bias toward shipping.
The point isn't just shipping. It's making someone's day less painful — for the user, and for the team building it.
Four industries. Real products that shipped, with real teams.
The platform's largest content discovery overhaul in years — shipped to a global community of 15M+ creators.
500px's first AI-personalized feed — replacing legacy Popular and Fresh streams with a unified "For You" experience that mixed recommended photos, photo stories, photographers, and AI-curated Mood Galleries. Shipped to 15M+ creators across 195 countries. The Mood Galleries feature was designed to take manual curation off the content team's plate so they could spend their time supporting photographers and growing the community instead.
— Senior PM at 500px, 2023.
→ LiveMost of what I know I learned from other people in the tech scene. This is me trying to pay it forward. Notes on product, AI, leadership, and the parts of the work that don't fit neatly into a roadmap. New posts land on Substack.
The work didn't disappear. It just moved upstairs.
The best PM moves don't look heroic. They look like timing.
AI gives you retrieval infrastructure. Whiteboarding gives you encoded memory. They are not substitutes.
No digests, no roundups. New posts straight to your inbox.
Staying on the cutting edge isn't a posture — it's a habit. The fastest way I've found to actually understand a new tool or model is to build something with it. These are the things I'm tinkering on in my (admittedly limited) spare time, mostly to learn.
Keep strategy on course.
A work-in-progress experiment: an AI layer that connects to the tools a team already uses — meetings, Slack, planning docs — through their existing authentication and permissions, with their choice of AI model (Claude, ChatGPT, or others). It distills those conversations into a clear, structured record of what the team is trying to achieve and why. No new data silo, no vendor lock-in. When day-to-day decisions start drifting from that intent, Helm flags it.
Early prototype, source-available. Nights-and-weekends pace.
→ github.com/erikdohnberg/helm"While at 500px, Erik delivered a complex content feed experience working with the AI teams, development, and design to launch a personalized feed of posts and photos to millions of users. Erik is one of the good ones and would be a great addition to any growing product team."
"Erik consistently proved himself as the go-to problem solver when the team faced ambiguity, changing priorities, or tight deadlines. I have no reservations in saying that Erik would make an immediate and transformative impact on any team he joins."
"Erik's communication-first mindset to product management ensures that the right opinions are heard up front. Combine that with his focus on ruthlessly defining problems before solving them and you are set up for success."