Jesse Van Hiller

Narrative

Writing that gives experience a voice and a throughline.

Selected writings, books, essays, and featured articles.

Books

Featured

essay

When the BBQ Found Its Purpose

What started as a fun way to celebrate music has become a tradition of giving back. The Van Hiller Rock and Roll Backyard BBQ is now an annual community fundraiser powered by music, friendship, and generosity, crushing fundraising goals and generating nearly $9,000 over two years in support of diabetes awareness, research, and the race for a cure.

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essay

Turning World Cup Chaos Into a Tracker You Can Actually Use

Built to make the FIFA™ World Cup easier to follow in real time, the tracker brings standings, projections, bracket paths, match details, scorers, and team profiles into one readable view. The archive preserves what the tracker saw, how its projections performed, and what changed as the tournament moved from group-stage uncertainty into knockout clarity, while setting the stage for future tournament coverage.

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essay

Shortening the Idea-Build Cycle with AI

The faster tools can build, the more important it becomes to define intent clearly, inspect output carefully, test edge cases, and keep the experience coherent. The product-AI confluence is not about replacing judgment. It is about shortening the loop between seeing a need, shaping a response, and putting something useful into the world.

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essay

I Am Cyborg

As a product manager, I think a lot about systems. Not just what they are supposed to do, but what happens when they fail. What signals they depend on. What inputs they can interpret. What outputs they produce. What work happens invisibly in the background until something breaks badly enough that everyone suddenly understands how much the system was doing all along. That is how I have come to understand my body. You see, I have Type 1 diabetes, as do millions of other people.

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essay

Is Product Management Becoming a Distributed Skillset?

As I witness the swift change AI brings, I keep coming back to a question that I don’t think product managers can avoid anymore: Is product management still mostly a role, or is it becoming a skillset that many roles need to carry?

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Archive

All writing.

essay

When the BBQ Found Its Purpose

What started as a fun way to celebrate music has become a tradition of giving back. The Van Hiller Rock and Roll Backyard BBQ is now an annual community fundraiser powered by music, friendship, and generosity, crushing fundraising goals and generating nearly $9,000 over two years in support of diabetes awareness, research, and the race for a cure.

Read more
essay

Turning World Cup Chaos Into a Tracker You Can Actually Use

Built to make the FIFA™ World Cup easier to follow in real time, the tracker brings standings, projections, bracket paths, match details, scorers, and team profiles into one readable view. The archive preserves what the tracker saw, how its projections performed, and what changed as the tournament moved from group-stage uncertainty into knockout clarity, while setting the stage for future tournament coverage.

Read more
essay

The Final Whistle Was Just the Beginning

The inaugural edition of the FIFA™ World Cup Tracker has been archived. Explore the complete 2026 tournament, review projection performance, and see what's coming next as the platform expands toward the 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup.

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essay

Shortening the Idea-Build Cycle with AI

The faster tools can build, the more important it becomes to define intent clearly, inspect output carefully, test edge cases, and keep the experience coherent. The product-AI confluence is not about replacing judgment. It is about shortening the loop between seeing a need, shaping a response, and putting something useful into the world.

Read more
essay

We -Are- (Can Be) The Champions

Most meaningful accomplishments begin as unreasonable ideas.

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essay

Coherence is the integration of diverse elements, relationships, or values

The same instincts show up in different rooms. The same questions follow me into different work. The same habits of attention keep returning, whether I am behind a drum kit, inside a roadmap conversation, writing an essay, or organizing people around a cause. I think in terms of universally applied methods: many lenses for the same work, and different work with the same lens.

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essay

A Room Has No Memory

A personal essay about some of the venues that shaped my musicianship, from glamorous residencies and cramped restaurant stages to blues jams, milestone gigs, and hard-earned load-ins. The room remembers none of it, but I do.

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essay

I Am Cyborg

As a product manager, I think a lot about systems. Not just what they are supposed to do, but what happens when they fail. What signals they depend on. What inputs they can interpret. What outputs they produce. What work happens invisibly in the background until something breaks badly enough that everyone suddenly understands how much the system was doing all along. That is how I have come to understand my body. You see, I have Type 1 diabetes, as do millions of other people.

Read more
essay

Is Product Management Becoming a Distributed Skillset?

As I witness the swift change AI brings, I keep coming back to a question that I don’t think product managers can avoid anymore: Is product management still mostly a role, or is it becoming a skillset that many roles need to carry?

Read more
essay

Disrupt yourself

The NYT went from editorial titan to digital dwarf even after a massive effort to digitize their presence. Realizing the miss they attacked the problem as any reporting organization would: they talked to people like crazy. What they came up with was a two-pronged approach: disruptively grow their audience and digitally fortify their newsroom. 

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book

The Underachiever - Part 1: Anticipation

Jooles Mueller (AKA 'The Underachiever') is a dot-com burnout and is tired of his blind commitment to productivity. He’s on a collision course with his heart, pushing him towards adventure, while his mind restrains him towards responsibility. But both are telling him to go to Paris. They just may not be one and the same destination.

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essay

The Names I Made, Found, and Couldn't Shake

I have answered to more names than I can reasonably explain. Some I abandoned. Some I adopted. Others seem to have stuck to me regardless of what I tried.

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medium

@jessevanhiller on Medium

Read my writing about life, science, product, music, and more on Medium.

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