Andy Shanks
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
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.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
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.
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.
Product Manager
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
AltMBA Degree in Business Administration (Online Leadership and Management Workshop)
altMBA by Seth Godin - Remote
Bachelor's Degree in Marketing
Aston Business School - Birmingham, UK
Skills
Tools
Trello, Asana, OmniGraffle, Slack, Basecamp, Xero, Google Docs, Skype, Jira, Microsoft Project
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Scrum, Kanban, User Testing, Augmented Reality (AR)
Industry Expertise
Healthcare Product Management, Food & Beverage, Automotive
Other
Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Digital Product Management, Product Management, Project Management, Web Platforms, Business Analysis, Requirements, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Models, Product Design, Product Marketing, Product Frameworks, Innovation, Product Ownership, Product Discovery, Healthcare Product Manager, Digital Marketing Product Manager, iOS, Web Product Management, Digital Advertising, Digital Marketing Product Management, Startups, Mobile, Prototyping, Finance, Waterfall Delivery, Internet of Things (IoT), Media, Business Development, Account Management, Strategy, RealtimeBoard, Virtual Reality (VR), Machine Learning, Dropbox, Mentorship, Waterfall Methodology
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring