Andrew A. Arizpe, Product Manager in Nashville, TN, United States
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Andrew A. Arizpe

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Location
Nashville, TN, United States
Toptal Member Since
June 24, 2019

Andrew is a founder and certified scrum product owner obsessed with delivering the most value possible. Strategy, collaboration, and execution are Andrew's key strengths as a product manager, which come in handy when setting priorities with a team to focus and accomplish goals. The edtech, fintech, and eCommerce verticals are where he has spent most of his time, delivering user experiences and products around streaming video, content, and payments.

Project Highlights

NFL Contest
Launched a video contest environment with the NFL and National Dairy Council; received thousands of video entries each year.
Digitizing Educational Content for New Market
Created concept, roadmap, and prototype for MVP of an interactive phonics and vocabulary platform for students and educators. Testing both the conversion of their products to digital and their desire to reach the US to lay the foundation for the MVP.
Product Health Score
Utilized data to fairly analyze 67 different product lines and determine which ones to invest in, maintain, or sunset.

Expertise

Work Experience

Head of Product

2022 - 2023
DigitalDrip
  • Stood up an MVP in 24 hours for a print-on-demand store with t-shirt and accessory designs and received first orders within the next 24 hours.
  • Leveraged generative AI to create SEO-friendly content related to the store and its products to attract shoppers.
  • Created and distributed ads on various social media outlets. A/B tested ads and made iterative changes to increase conversions.
  • Experimented with prompts and outputs of generative AI until an optimal approach for the business was identified.

Product Manager and Owner

2019 - 2023
Syndigo
  • Led feature and data migration efforts from acquired platforms. Two companies were purchased shortly before my arrival, and I was tasked to oversee feature parity and data migrations into Syndigo's platform.
  • Built content dashboards for clients who had hundreds of layouts for display on retail sites but no bird's eye view of their status. Included the most valuable information and delivered an informative experience that increased engagement.
  • Led the effort to "stop the bleeding" when I arrived by prioritizing and systematically solving issues at the root where possible, addressing the significant churn due to bugs and support issues. By the next quarter, we were back on track.

Product Manager, Strategy

2018 - 2019
PayLease
  • Increased the predictability of managing multiple development teams in executing the roadmap.
  • Identified opportunities based on data and market research and planned roadmaps based on the highest impact on business goals.
  • Created users stories, wireframes, and prototypes based on requirements gathered from various stakeholders—increasing cohesion and eliminating the guessing game for engineers.
  • Worked with marketing, sales, client success, and engineering to drive success at every stage of the product lifecycle.
  • Created value propositions and built business cases to illustrate ROI potential, focusing efforts on the right products and positioning them for success.
  • Led the UX team to deliver the most engaging and profitable user experience. Analyzed user behavior and delivered features leading to more transactions per user and higher overall satisfaction.
  • Analyzed internal and external data to allow the organization to make better, fact-based decisions.

Chief Product Officer

2007 - 2018
SchoolTube
  • Created solutions that attracted users in 75,000 schools and $9 million in venture capital.
  • Collaborated with engineers in translating ideas into viable solutions.
  • Converted the development team from Waterfall to Agile—increasing predictability and efficiency.
  • Acted as an ambassador between engineering, sales, third parties, and the like to keep everyone on the same page and to keep working towards the same goals.
  • Made data-driven decisions about the direction of product and investment for the right products/features.
  • Managed software development process; built roadmaps, wrote user stories, managed sprints, and releases.
  • Developed go-to-market plans to encourage the adoption of new products/features leading to 100% YOY growth.
  • Identified and drove adoption of productivity tools that enable collaboration, transparency, and execution through complex projects.
  • Pitched to investors, closed clients and sponsors, and presented to the board of directors to sell the value of the company, our vision, and product offering.

User Education Articles

Wrote documentation, how-tos, and FAQs in a fun and delightful way to help users have a positive experience with the platform. The content was searchable and linked in the UI, and support requests decreased by 15% over three months.

Many support requests were coming in from users getting stuck or not knowing what to do in certain areas of the UI. In an effort to increase user satisfaction and return visits, we analyzed the most common issues and data associated with behavior to craft content meant to help users adopt best practices and guide them through specific actions.

NFL Contest

Launched a video contest environment with the NFL and National Dairy Council; received thousands of video entries each year.

The NFL's marketing division reached out to my company with interest in generating content from kids about eating and living healthy.

From a business perspective, I closed and went on to manage the account.

Working with the NFL, their third-party contractors, and our development teams, I led the software development effort serving in a product owner/project manager capacity.

We successfully ran the program for three years throughout the duration of the NFL's initiative.

Digitizing Educational Content for New Market

Created concept, roadmap, and prototype for MVP of an interactive phonics and vocabulary platform for students and educators. Testing both the conversion of their products to digital and their desire to reach the US to lay the foundation for the MVP.

The UK-based client had historically sold 100% print products. Their focus was also selling D2C, but they had found recent success selling their print materials directly to schools in the UK and some in the US. They had resounding feedback that their content should be available in a digital format, and I came on board to help them figure out how to do that. After researching their current content and prospective users, I created concepts, a prototype, and a roadmap to MVP in collaboration with the CEO, design team, development team, and marketing team.

Resume, Cover Letter, and Interview Consulting

Helped clients land interviews and ultimately get hired by crafting their resumes and cover letters and coaching them for the interview process.

When applying for a job, I believe the last thing you should worry about is your resume. I helped many people with fantastic experience craft resumes and cover letters based on their experience and the opportunities they were seeking. Many of them were more stressed about using the right words and formatting than any other part of the job-hunting process.

Increase Engagement

Successfully increased video views per session from an average of 1.3 to 2.5—nearly doubling ad revenue.

After assessing different options to increase engagement, we honed in on related videos and the experience around them. Then taking an iterative approach, we began enhancing, testing, measuring, and taking the enhancement even further.

Implemented Tasks:
• Improved the related video engine for better results.
• Added related videos to the video player.
• Set the most related video to autoplay after ten seconds.
• Set the most related video to autoplay after six seconds.

With each step, we moved the needle and proved "related videos" was a lever we could pull to increase engagement/revenue.

Product Health Score

Utilized data to fairly analyze 67 different product lines and determine which ones to invest in, maintain, or sunset.

One of the first projects at the fintech company was to establish a product health score and to back it up with data that mattered.

After meeting with internal experts and gaining access to data, a scoring rubric was fabricated based on the most important and common traits/data points of the 67 different products.

The traits were broken up into four categories, and each group was weighted based on importance and impact on the future success of our products.

There was a lot of tribal knowledge and opinions on the "health" of particular products, but that knowledge and data of all the products had never been consolidated or presented in a way that could be easily consumed by the CEO.

The final health score did confirm many assumptions but also brought to light potential opportunities and problems. These opportunities and challenges were easy to dig deeper into because of the way we presented the deliverable.

It was a hit! Critical decisions were made with confidence. After building the health score manually and from scratch, it was transformed into an automated system that could be referenced based on quarterly data and insights.
2003 - 2007

Bachelor of Science Degree in Communications, Psychology

William Woods University - Fulton, MO, USA

MAY 2015 - PRESENT

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)

Scrum Alliance

Collaboration That Works

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