Andy Shanks, Product Manager in London, United Kingdom

Andy Shanks

Product Manager

Location
London, United Kingdom
Toptal Member Since
July 9, 2019

Andy's been collaborating with visionary and creative teams to make ideas happen for over 15 years. He's launched a DJ brand at Pro-Audio, worked in digital advertising as a project manager, at Google as a producer, Red Bull as a digital manager and founded a digital product design studio. He's guided over 100 web, mobile, and IoT projects and specializes in designing and delivering against strategic MVP roadmaps to validate ideas.

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Project Highlights

Launching a Health Tech MVP
Led and managed the design and development of a complex AR-powered wellbeing app.
Press for Peroni | IoT Button
Led the design and development of a prototype Amazon Dash-style "beer" button field-tested with 200 beta testers.
Sainsbury's Food Rescue Powered by Google
Successfully led a challenging brand partnership project between Google and Sainbury's to tackle food waste in the UK.

Expertise

Agile Product ManagementDigital Product ManagementFood & BeverageHealthcareMachine LearningMinimum Viable Product (MVP)Project ManagementStartups

Education

AltMBA Degree
altMBA by Seth Godin
Bachelor's Degree
Aston Business School

Work Experience

2012 - PRESENT

Founder | Managing Director | Product Director

Ideas Made
  • Oversaw and directed the delivery of a variety of digital products, services, and experiences for well-known brands and lesser-known startups.
  • Managed the products and projects.
  • Designed and iterated against strategic MVP roadmaps.
  • Developed the business.
2018 - 2018

Mentor

D&AD
  • Mentored at D&AD's creative startup school helping young and ambitious entrepreneurs shape their ideas, design their brands, build MVPs, and plan the execution and funding of their ideas.
  • Helped design the course program.
  • Created much of the learning content.
2012 - 2014

Product Manager

Google
  • Oversaw and was responsible for the delivery of a brand partnership product launch between Google and Sainsburys (grocery) to use technology to tackle food waste.
  • Directed and coordinated the teams.
  • Tested the product and generated development feedback.
2012 - 2013

Digital Marketing Consultant

Red Bull
  • Managed the F1 teams' digital marketing channels and campaigns while they looked to hire a full-time manager.
  • Led the requirements gathering for a new fan website.
  • Oversaw the design, management, and delivery of the new web platform.
2010 - 2012

Digital Producer | Project Manager

Various Global Digital Agencies
  • Worked as a project manager on digital advertising and marketing campaign projects.
  • Worked as a contract senior digital producer at Tribal DDB, TBWA/Tequila, Host, Lowe, and Three Drunk Monkeys in Sydney.
  • Was contracted at Mother, Agency Republic and Work Club in London.
  • Worked on brands such as Volkswagon, Google, YouTube, Adidas, BBC, Mercedes, and Bankwest.
2005 - 2007

Digital Producer | Product Tester

Harman Pro
  • Supported, as a semi-pro DJ at the time, the product development department to design, develop, and test a range of new digital DJ mixers.
  • Worked in the marketing department on digital project management, advertising, and events.
  • Collaborated with ambassadors to test and feedback on the products we were designing.
  • Performed research in retail outlets.

Project History

NINE App | A Visual To-do List

Launched my own app product, which now has 250,000 users and has been featured by Apple in over 27 countries.

I worked with my business partner to scratch an itch that we had, the troublesome problem of losing photos we had taken in our camera roll. NINE app lets you organize your pictures in nine categories: things to do, see, buy, go to, watch, listen, and so on. Built for visual thinkers who use their camera as a way of remembering things they want to take action on—NINE lets you capture quickly, organize simply, and find easily.

After we launched the product to market, Apple featured it in best new utility apps across 27 counties, helping it reach 250,000 users and still growing.

Launching a Fintech Web Platform MVP

Led the design and development of an innovative startup investment platform MVP that raised $1M to develop the full product.

Owing to an NDA agreement, I can't disclose much else except that I was highly involved in the requirements gathering, designing the user experience, leading the development team, and providing ongoing support and improvement iterations.

Launching a Health Tech MVP

Led and managed the design and development of a complex AR-powered wellbeing app.

Due to an NDA, I can't disclose much else except the app is due to go into clinical trial after next round of funding, and that I played a crucial role in moving the product development forward along the roadmap.

Press for Peroni | IoT Button

Led the design and development of a prototype Amazon Dash-style "beer" button field-tested with 200 beta testers.

Amazon Dash had just been released, and Peroni wanted to investigate what it would take to develop their own IoT button product. They wanted to give their users a way to make sure that whenever they ran out of good beer that it would get replaced by whoever managed their online grocery shopping.

The button enabled users to connect to their WiFi and online grocery account and pick the type of beer product they wanted when pressed. It had several LED states, a support app, and a website.

My role was to manage and direct the project team liaising with product design, project management, customers, and the client.

This was a project delivered by Ideas Made, the digital product studio I founded.

Sainsbury's Food Rescue Powered by Google

Successfully led a challenging brand partnership project between Google and Sainbury's to tackle food waste in the UK.

I arranged a series of strategic and creative workshops to ideate a solution to the problem that over 50% of food in the UK is wasted. The answer was a web app powered by Google voice search that enabled users to speak the ingredients they had leftover in their cupboards and get quality recipe ideas in return so they could rescue the food from the bin. We also created a platform and community hub was to track how much food was being saved around the country via a leaderboard.

It was a large team across both companies and several agencies with many legal and logistical challenges which I pushed through to launch the product successfully spawning a whole new community of Food Rescuers for Sainsbury's.

Education

2017 - 2017

AltMBA Degree in Business Administration (Online Leadership and Management Workshop)

altMBA by Seth Godin - Remote

1998 - 2002

Bachelor's Degree in Marketing

Aston Business School - Birmingham, UK