The Fierce Video editorial team is proud to present its third annual Emerging Leaders Awards, recognizing the brightest young professionals rising up the ranks of the streaming TV industry. Throughout the month of May we’ll be featuring these profiles with each of our finalists. We will announce the winners during our StreamTV Show with a live awards ceremony in Denver on June 6 at 7:30 p.m. MT. Not yet registered for the StreamTV Show, running June 6-8? Be sure to register now!
Nick Oppenneer/Sling TV:
With a diverse product background, Oppenneer has worked across multiple product and marketing disciplines in large consumer product and technology companies, in addition to an early career in B2B sales. With customer obsession at the foundation of all his work, Oppenneer remains focused on solving customer problems with every product he takes to market. At Sling TV, he and his team will help customers seamlessly discover, consider, purchase and enjoy the Sling TV experience.
What his colleagues are saying:
"Nick is a team player through and through, and he continually harnesses his distinct background in team sports to empower Sling's product team and deliver positive results. He tackles difficult projects while looking toward the future with an eye on ever-changing industry trends to anticipate what's next. Since Sling's inception, we've relied heavily on our product team to elevate the user interface to include innovative new features, and Nick has shown he's up to the challenge to help create the best streaming TV experience out there." - Seth VanSickel, SVP of operations and product at Sling TV
"Nick's dedication to the planning and execution of exciting new product features has been a tremendous asset to our team and the overall success of Sling. His energy, curiosity and enthusiasm to explore new possibilities for our users has helped us achieve some incredible milestones." - Jonathan Lin, VP of product at Sling TV
Streaming Industry Q&A:
What streaming services do you subscribe to?
Sling TV, Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Paramount+, Apple TV+, ESPN+, HBO Max, Disney+.
Describe your biggest career highlight so far.
During my time at Amazon we grew a business unit by over 2.5x through an iterative growth product and marketing process. Myself and a marketing counterpart focused on expanding customer discovery channels and experimenting to optimize the shopping customer experience to drive higher traffic and conversion. We listened to customers, tested, listened more, and tested again. It was my first introduction to this "growth mindset" and ever since I have been hooked!
What has been your biggest career learning experience?
I've learned the most through failure. I once inherited a product focused on driving operational efficiency through an internal collaboration tool. This could not have been a worse product match for my skillset, background and interests. I struggled to articulate my long-term strategy, our KPIs remained flat and I started to doubt my ability to grow as a product manager. Fortunately, my director at the time recognized my frustration and sat me down to explain that good product managers fail when they have a poor product match. I learned that in order for me to stay motivated, and for my product to succeed, I needed to be passionate about the product I lead. I'll never forget that advice, and I'm grateful that it led me to the streaming industry.
What's next for you in terms of new challenges in streaming TV?
I'm really excited for further adoption of free ad-supported television (FAST and AVOD), and the content discovery challenges that come with these formats. The assumption that customers prefer ad-free TV may be true, but there is a massive customer base who is willing to accept ad-supported content if it means low-price, or free. Within this space, the volume of content, and sometimes less well-known content, can be overwhelming to new customers, so thoughtfully presenting the right content, to the right customer, at the right time, will be essential for FAST and AVOD to continue its adoption trends.