Shellen.com

A blog about design and products by Jason Shellen

Jason Shellen

Founder · Designer · Product Leader

Building products that change how people communicate has been my life's work. From pioneering blogging at Blogger to launching Google Reader, from reimagining workplace collaboration at Slack to creating new ways to share stories—I've spent over two decades at the intersection of technology, platforms, and human connection.

About Jason Shellen

Jason has built a distinguished career as a founder and product strategist. Most recently as head of Platform at Slack, the messaging app for teams, Shellen was responsible for leading the development of Slack's platform strategy and partner ecosystem. Prior to Slack, he founded Hike Labs, which was acquired by Pinterest, where he went on to lead a Core Product team before joining Slack.

As a business development director and product strategist at Pyra Labs, he was part of a revolution in mass communication with Blogger, which was sold to Google in 2003. During his tenure at Google, Jason started the Google Reader project as the founding product manager, worked on a plug-in hybrid project for Google.org, and helped acquire companies like Feedburner, Picasa and Measure Map.

After leaving Google, Shellen founded Thing Labs in 2008 and created social tools Plinky, Brizzly, the Brizzly Guide, and Let's Be Trends. In September 2010, Thing Labs merged with AOL and Shellen became VP of Product heading up the AIM & Messaging Group at AOL, guiding the relaunch and rebrand of AIM. In 2013, Shellen co-founded Boxer, a market-leading mobile application that changed the way people interact with email, which was acquired by VMware in 2015.

He holds patents on feed and social media technologies and has been named to Business Insider's "Silicon Valley 100" list, a compendium of people in the Valley who have "done the coolest things".

After five years of service, Jason stepped down from the Board of Regents at his alma mater, St. Mary's College of California, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art in 1996. Shellen resides in Lafayette, California with his wife Allison and their two sons

Angel Investments & Advisory

Jason has invested in and advised numerous startups in the technology and consumer space, including:

  • Haus - A new drink for the way we live now (Launched 2019)
  • Delighted - The fastest and easiest way to gather actionable feedback (Acquired by Qualtrics)
  • Talkshow - Simple, uncluttered public conversations (Acquired by Medium)
  • Faraday Bicycles - Beautiful electric bikes (Acquired by Pon Holdings)
  • LaunchKit - Simple, useful tools for mobile makers (Acquired by Google)
  • Fitstar - Your iPad is your personal trainer (Acquired by Fitbit)
  • 8tracks - Radio, rediscovered

Press Bio

Jason Shellen is a product leader and serial entrepreneur based in Lafayette, California. He most recently served as head of platform at Slack, where he led platform strategy and the partner ecosystem.

Shellen founded Hike Labs, acquired by Pinterest in 2015, and Thing Labs, which merged with AOL in 2010. He was the founding product manager for Google Reader and helped acquire Feedburner, Picasa and Measure Map for Google. He served as business development director at Pyra Labs/Blogger and as vice president of product at AOL, leading the AIM & Messaging Group. He co-founded Boxer, a mobile email application acquired by VMware in 2015.

Shellen holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from St. Mary's College of California and has been named to Business Insider's "Silicon Valley 100" list. He holds multiple patents in feed and social media technologies. He served on the St. Mary's College Board of Regents from 2011-2017. He lives in Lafayette, Calif., with his wife, Allison, and their two sons.

Press Photos

Jason Shellen headshot

Photo: Helena Price

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This site is built with Eleventy, a simple static site generator, and styled with Tailwind CSS. Media embeds are powered by Eleventy Embed Everything, and icons come from Font Awesome.

The site supports Micropub, an open standard for posting to your own website, allowing me to publish from various clients and tools.

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