Justin Winter

Product-minded growth executive. Founder. Operator.

San Francisco Bay Area

I build growth engines at the intersection of digital commerce, product strategy, and systems design. Currently VP of Growth at A Pup Above.

Read The Compositor

Worked on projects with growth and ops teams at

Engagements span 2016–present. Advisor relationships and short-form projects not pictured.

I build growth engines at the intersection of digital commerce, product strategy, and systems design. I’ve co-founded companies from scratch, led growth at venture-backed and bootstrapped brands alike, and spent fifteen years learning that product decisions and revenue decisions are the same decision. Currently VP of Growth at A Pup Above. Previously Swiftly, Legacybox, Boostopia, and Diamond Candles.

Work

A Pup Above — VP of Growth

Leading digital commerce, full-funnel DTC growth, Amazon, and subscription strategy for a premium dog nutrition brand distributed nationally at retail.
Swiftly — VP of Growth

Led GTM and demand generation for a retail media SaaS platform powering grocery retail ecosystems.
Legacybox — Head of Cloud

Owned product strategy and cloud infrastructure for a consumer media preservation platform managing 2.9PB of customer content used by over one million families.
Off-Road Gatlinburg — Interim COO

Doubled revenue in under 90 days by rebuilding digital funnels, ad performance, and growth systems across a five-location outdoor recreation company.
Airshop — Head of Marketing

Second full-time hire at a venture-backed beauty ecommerce spinout of Deliverr, acquired by Shopify. Led growth strategy through product-market fit phase.
Pendleton Places — Founder & CEO

Built a short-term rental management company to 40+ properties and $2M+ in annual revenue using a shared-operations hotel model in the Raleigh-Durham market. Self-taught interior designer across the portfolio.
Boostopia — Co-founder & CEO

Built a VC-backed B2B SaaS platform for DTC customer support operations. Scaled to $25K MRR and 100+ customers including Allbirds, Bombas, Reformation, Peter Millar, and Supergoop. Angel-backed by Jason Calacanis via LAUNCH.
Diamond Candles — Co-founder & CEO

Bootstrapped the largest online home fragrance brand in the world from zero to $22M+ in annual revenue with a team of 50+. Built on a $2K credit card.

Early Years

McDonald’s — Crew at 15

Started working within a week of being legally able to. Learned the inside of unit economics, shift discipline, and operational throughput before the rest of high school.
Cutco · Vector Marketing — Field sales rep, then district sales manager

Person-to-person knife sales through high school and college. Generated $97K+ in personal part-time revenue with a 25% higher close rate and 20% higher AOV than the company average, and earned 11 company incentive trips. Promoted to district sales manager mid-college — recruited and trained 190+ reps and led the team to $353K in revenue over a single summer season.
College web & marketing agency — Hustle

Ran a small web design and digital marketing studio out of college — building sites and running paid acquisition for local businesses before the discipline had a name.
Moving company — Hustle

Ran a Craigslist-acquired moving operation out of my dorm, subcontracting roommates and classmates against weekend demand surges. First lesson in marketplace dynamics — margin came from arbitraging the labor.

Personal

Save71 — Co-founder

Alumni-led advocacy organization pushing for governance and leadership accountability reform at Liberty University.
Summit Church — Community group leader, Durham, NC (~10 years)

Hosted a weekly in-home gathering across roughly a decade. Mentored newer members and peers through major life transitions — marriages, new parenthood, career pivots, losses. Coordinated community service projects and built long-form, intentional friendships across the chapter.
Service projects in India — Team lead

Two trips to Madhya Pradesh in support of local non-profits doing community development work. Led the second team — five people, two weeks on the ground.

Education

Liberty University — Lynchburg, Virginia · 2006–2010

Undergraduate degree in marketing and theology.

Family

Married young to my best friend. Father to a three-year-old son. Raising a family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Press & Recognition

Internet Retailer Hot 100

Diamond Candles named among the top 100 ecommerce sites globally for breaking new ground in digital retail.
Mixergy

Featured interview on bootstrapping Diamond Candles to $1M revenue in year one with no outside funding.
eCommerceFuel Podcast

Featured on scaling from zero to $20M in three years through performance marketing and retention systems.
Growth Hacker TV

Featured interview on building viral product loops and DTC growth strategy.
New York Times

Diamond Candles cited in feature coverage on Zenefits and emerging DTC company infrastructure.

Advisory & Investment

Selected relationships across consumer, media, and technology.

Boll & Branch
Cora
SumAll
ProcessOut
Swym
The Pour Over
Bizzy Coffee
ESSIO Shower
GiveForms

Speaking & Consulting

Available for keynotes, panels, mentor sessions, and on-demand 1:1 calls.

Keynote & panel speaker

Business, marketing, technology, and growth events. For booking, availability, or rates: email me.
Office hours & mentorship — Mentorpass

On-demand 1:1 calls paid by the minute, plus ongoing mentorship and fractional advisory engagements for founders and operators in growth and DTC. Topics span growth, ecommerce, SaaS, and go-to-market strategy. mentorpass.co/justinwinter →

What People Say

I’ve taken 100+ consulting calls with founders, operators, and growth leaders working through e-commerce, acquisition, positioning, and growth strategy. A selection of what they said.

Justin was awesome to speak with in a number of areas relating to ecommerce & marketing. It’s a given he is brilliant with marketing, social media, etc., having grown Diamond Candles so quickly. However, he also has a very strategic approach to marketing and gave some great insights into product marketing channel fit. Got a heap of ideas on virality & marketing tools. What can I say — one of my best calls on Clarity.

Manuel Crespo

Best call I’ve had on Clarity (and I’ve had some good ones — never given that superlative before). Very ethical marketer standing up for what he believes in and has a terrific mind and enthusiasm. Specifics: (1) the sheer number of new tools he introduced me to, (2) helpful clarifying the big idea I had around traffic generation, (3) novel ABM stuff.

Lance Johnson

Any early-stage venture is inherently risky, complex, and challenging. It takes serious intellectual horsepower. An entrepreneur needs to think through decision trees, game theory, scenario planning, etc. Justin has the intellectual stamina to work through key strategic issues. I’ve talked with a lot of really smart people on Clarity. The call with Justin was one of the best.

Omar Baig

If there was such a thing as a sorcerer in residence for e-commerce problems, Justin would be it. There’s a lot of noisy data and signals in e-commerce, and Justin helps cut right to the heart of your problem and figure out the best way to attack it.

Michael Grasewicz

More from short consulting engagements

Best call on Clarity ever. Justin is an e-commerce rock star and I wish I had his advice years ago. He took the time to review our site beforehand and had a plan for the call so that our time was 100% productive.

Amy Rodbell
This was BY FAR the best phone call I have EVER had! Justin is the most informative and knowledgeable individual I have ever talked with about my business. I HIGHLY recommend speaking with him as he can definitely point you in the right direction.

Griffin Thall Pura Vida Bracelets
Justin was super sharp and gave us very actionable advice. Great guy and incredibly helpful.

Justin Mares co-author of Traction
Excellent call. I wish I had talked to Justin 6 months before. There are 1,000 paths in front of us to reach our goals, and which one we take creates a totally different story. But how do we know which one to take? Well, ask the guy who has reached there already. Justin is the guy. Actual actionable strategic steps that need to be implemented immediately.

Murali Sajja
Friendly, helpful, and an expert in his field. Very refreshing to speak with someone of his caliber. The notes I took during our conversation made it look as if the sticky note monster threw up all over my office.

Mark Stuart Brown
Justin quickly understood our primary challenges and shared thoughtful and relevant insights along with an actionable game plan. He was able to quickly adapt to new hypotheticals so we could rapidly explore the opportunity set and the corresponding implications.

Scott Barnett
So incredibly helpful, I cannot say enough great things about our call. He brought up many things to help me which I didn’t know about, and gave me plenty of inspiration I really wasn’t expecting. Don’t wonder about him — he’s the real deal.

Allen Walton SpyGuy
Absolutely awesome. You can tell within seconds that Justin really knows his stuff. He took the time to understand my business to then give extremely specific and actionable insights.

Mark Patchett Growth Gurus

“Dude is legit.” Paul Jarrett · Bulu Box
“Justin is a superstar. I always finish my calls with him with a to-do list and a feeling of… Clarity.” Richard Hopen
“Justin is an idea generator extraordinaire.” Patrick Casey
“Brilliant & actionable business strategy.” Shawn Mixan

The Compositor

I write about product strategy, growth systems, and competitive advantage at The Compositor — a series on how the best companies are built through disciplined composition of best-in-class primitives across the value chain.