Radu Irava
Product Manager
Location
Bucharest, Romania
Toptal Member Since
February 8, 2019
Radu is a product manager with 11+ years of experience in the software world. He has worked with more than a dozen tech companies from B2C to B2B, web to mobile, and 1 to 100,000 employees. Passionate about business growth, Radu has contributed to the acquisition of two companies for more than $150 million. He loves remote consultancy projects as they keep him challenged and excited.
Radu is available for hire
Hire RaduProject Highlights
The Google Adwords for Audio
Created a new product line in the digital audio advertising industry and grew the web platform.
The Fastest Growing Mobile Apps
Exponentially grew the fashion eCommerce brand via its mobile apps, contributing to the company's acquisition.
Expertise
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)Growth StrategyNew Product DevelopmentProduct GrowthProduct ManagementProduct StrategyStartupsUser Experience (UX)Education
Master of Science Degree
Delft University of Technology
Bachelor of Engineering Degree
University of Bucharest
Select Certifications
Startup School Graduate
YCombinator
Developing Political Savvy
LinkedIn
Work Experience
2019 - PRESENT
Head of Product/General Manager
SureSwift Capital
- Created and implemented the product development process for the entire portfolio of software companies.
- Achieved single-digit revenue growth across the portfolio consistently.
- Delivered double-digit return on investment (ROI) to investors consistently.
2016 - PRESENT
Product Management Consultant
Independent
- Helped businesses grow and innovate.
- Consulted with early-stage startups in the customer discovery phase.
- Coached aspiring and junior product managers.
- Built product departments.
- Delivered advanced product reviews.
2017 - 2018
Product Manager, Programmatic Advertising
AdsWizz (acquired by Pandora)
- Researched customers needs for three of the company's products.
- Understood market needs, analyzed competitive solutions, and foresaw market evolution in order to drive product iteration together with execs and engineering.
- Kept an eye on the capability of competitors' products and strove to differentiate.
- Worked with product designers to analyze user behavior and better drive UX iteration.
- Worked with marketing team to articulate launch timing and produce marketing collateral.
- Gave a persuasive and fact-backed picture of the roadmap to senior leaders and end-users of the product.
- Reported directly to the VP Product.
- Defined strategy, requirements, and roadmap for three of the company's products.
- Built and executed product roadmaps.
- Made sure anyone could answer the "why are we doing this?" question.
- Worked with distributed teams which means being autonomous in executing product vision.
- Ensured product vision is shared across engineering, business, and operations teams.
- Served as the single point of contact for tech, business and operation team for all things product.
- Instilled confidence in the engineering teams and having a sense of what is required from a back-end as well as UX perspective.
2015 - 2017
Product Manager/Mobile Platforms
Fashion Days (acquired by eMag)
- Drove the ideation, development, and launch of native (iOS, Android) across all major mobile platforms and devices.
- Produced functional and design specifications, mockups, prototypes, scenarios, and task flows for new features and functions.
- Collaborated with design and engineering teams on a daily basis and in all phases of product development.
- Maintained a deep, holistic understanding of the mobile user experience (e.g.user behavior, technology, context) and the market landscape in order to adjust the product path accordingly.
- Integrated customer feedback, business metrics, research, and opportunities into product requirements to enhance user satisfaction and sales.
- Established a shared mobile vision and strategy across the company, by building consensus on priorities leading to product execution.
- Understood the technical architecture of complex and highly scalable media products.
- Maximized efficiency in a constantly evolving environment where the process is fluid and creative solutions are the norm.
- Consolidated the strategic position by delivering products that adhere to the company's quality standards and raise the bar for competitors.
2015 - 2015
Mobile Business Analyst/Implementation Consultant
PhaseFour
- Defined the scope, current functionalities, and further development possibilities of Bitcoin mobile payment apps for international customers.
- Developed use cases, functional designs, and wireframes of Bitcoin mobile payment apps for international customers.
- Created financial offers, time estimations, and managed the planning of consultancy and development projects on Bitcoin mobile payment apps for international customers.
- Designed mobile services based on digital currency payments for the Internet of Things.
- Designed a proximity payment mobile app using Ripple protocol and Beacons with BLE technology.
- Developed an MVP for a demo with representatives of companies from the financial industry (including the top three banks in the Netherlands) that resulted in leads and prospects.
2015 - 2015
Service Designer
Philips
- Designed platform services based on indoor localization.
- Developed game-theoretic models to incentivize user participation in location-based services for marketing activities (cross-selling, up-selling) in the Retail industry.
- Developed business models for indoor positioning services based on visible light communication technology in retail industry.
2014 - 2015
IT Business Analyst/Implementation Consultant
ORTEC
- Provided requirements engineering of an automated tool that replaced the department's hardware and software monitoring practices and stores checks' results in a database and presented them in real-time on a web-based dashboard.
- Extended and customized an existing open-source monitoring solution written in C#, configuring it with the department policy, testing, and deploying it.
- Created standardized SQL-based reports using MS Report Builder.
2011 - 2014
C# Software Developer/Consultant
ORTEC
- Met with clients to determine their goals and requirements.
- Planned timescales and the resources needed.
- Elaborated technical and financial offers depending on customers' requirements.
- Coordinated a team of 1 developer and 16 data analysts for implementing customer-specific projects.
- Provided support and training to customers.
- Delivered presentations and demos of the company's solutions at customers' sites.
- Participated in internal sales meetings for improving short-term and long-term strategy.
- Designed, implemented, and tested new functionality, debugged and fixed existing functionality.
- Optimized and documented source code for re-usability purposes.
- Developed complex GUI modules in a MVC pattern.
- Aggregated big data by writing mathematical algorithms and creating charts, graphs, heat maps, and radars.
- Used Eclipse to create WSDL files and generate classes structures.
- Created and configured SOAP web services.
- Created customer-specific XML Query based reports using MS Report Builder.
2010 - 2011
Data Analyst
ORTEC
- Extracted and analyzed statistical data from football matches.
- Updated and administered the database.
- Provided improvement suggestions to the development team.
- Tested applications and reported bugs.
- Collaborated with global analysts teams.
- Communicated information to the technical staff of football teams (Ajax, Feyenoord, etc.) and media (De Telegraaf, NOS, etc.).
Project History
The Google Adwords for Audio
Created a new product line in the digital audio advertising industry and grew the web platform.
Created a new product line in the digital audio advertising industry and grew the web platform, contributing to the company's acquisition.
The Fastest Growing Mobile Apps
https://fashiondays.com/Exponentially grew the fashion eCommerce brand via its mobile apps, contributing to the company's acquisition.
Exponentially grew the fashion eCommerce brand via its mobile apps, contributing to the company's acquisition. The company became the biggest online fashion player of CEE.
Purple Protocol
Organized development and design teams to build landing page and MVP.
Oversaw business case, operational plan, pitch deck, investor meetings, and negotiations.
cv30
https://www.cv30.co/Managed overall product review.
▪ Oversaw landing pages structure and content.
▪ Handled mechanism design for beta release.
▪ Handled mechanism design for beta release.
Chat2it
https://chat2it.com/Developed an MVP for a mobile application with a unique communication concept.
▪ Defined the product and refined it based on market opportunities.
▪ Provided requirements engineering for mobile app and complex back-end systems.
▪ Managed communication with software development partners.
▪ Contributed to sales and marketing strategy.
▪ Provided requirements engineering for mobile app and complex back-end systems.
▪ Managed communication with software development partners.
▪ Contributed to sales and marketing strategy.
AVA360
http://glo-marine.com/Built a prototype for a web-based visual management tool using 3D spherical camera technology.
Built a prototype for a web-based visual management tool using 3D spherical camera technology.
Education
2013 - 2015
Master of Science Degree in Management of Technology
Delft University of Technology - Delft, Netherlands
2009 - 2013
Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Information Technology
University of Bucharest - Bucharest, Romania
Certifications
DECEMBER 2018 - PRESENT
Building Resilience
DECEMBER 2018 - PRESENT
Persuasive Selling
NOVEMBER 2018 - PRESENT
Startup School Graduate
YCombinator
NOVEMBER 2018 - PRESENT
Humor in the Workplace
NOVEMBER 2018 - PRESENT
Developing Political Savvy
NOVEMBER 2018 - PRESENT