Celso Pinto, Product Manager in London, United Kingdom
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Celso Pinto

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Location
London, United Kingdom
Toptal Member Since
January 25, 2019

A skilled operator with 20 years of experience in the software industry, Celso brings deep and diverse product management experience in SaaS companies and regulated (eg. FinTech) sectors. Celso has worked alongside senior management, from the earliest stages of new market opportunity research and new product development to cultivating a great product culture within existing products and teams.

Project Highlights

SimpleTax
Led product design and development of SimpleTax, growing it from launch to market leadership and an exit.
Pixie
Secured several purchase commitments from target customers by iterating on high fidelity mockups to capture user flows.
Backstage
Managed the company's roadmap portfolio, launched payments and user verification initiatives, launched and grew the voiceover vertical to 30,000 performers.

Expertise

Work Experience

Product/Founder

2017 - PRESENT
Pomar
  • Performed customer discovery for UsePixie.com, leading to 30+ accountancy firms interested in the product with paid commitments based on initial product mockups.
  • Negotiated joint-venture with an outsourced development team, delivering the business case, market opportunity and competitor analysis, 3-year budget with break-even analysis, and investment deck.
  • Developed and managed product roadmap and user stories with Jira/Confluence, and validated product UX with qualitative user research.
  • Coached the outsourced team on developing high quality standards and their impact on the overall product execution, with a mix of group and 1-on-1 sessions.
  • Developed and sold LandingPay.com, a Stripe add-on that enables marketers to collect payments on any landing page without needing to involve IT.

VP Operations Europe

2017 - 2017
Mezu Inc.
  • Researched the market and developed a business plan to support the business expansion from the USA to Europe.
  • Drove the EU regulatory approval roadmap, budget, and timelines, by procuring and managing multiple partners from banking institutions to regulatory consultants.
  • Oversaw scope, timelines, and budget for the adoption of marketing technology stack, coordinating with Mezu's marketing, engineering, and compliance teams.
  • Successfully managed various procurement processes to secure technology vendors and consulting partners.

Sr Product Manager - Payments

2016 - 2017
We got POP
  • Managed and coordinated internal stakeholders to define the yearly payments platform roadmap.
  • Led a team of four engineers to maintain the original payments platform, and develop a ledger system to track payments in the marketplace.
  • Managed bi-weekly sprints (daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, sprint planning, and retrospective meetings, etc.), developed and groomed product backlog.
  • Guided the team of eight engineers and one product manager in adopting Scrum and increased velocity 10x though improved requirements and better methodology.
  • Line managed one product manager, providing 1:1 coaching and support to design and deliver the marketplace's roadmap.
  • Delivered the company's product management guidelines to the executive, sales, support, and engineering teams.
  • Led the adoption of BI software to enable real-time reporting of marketplace KPIs, eliminating days of manual data collection and reporting.

EVP Strategy & Business Development

2015 - 2016
YLD Ltd.
  • Redefined YLD's market positioning and services offering by incorporating insights from interviews with potential buyers, current clients, and internal stakeholders.
  • Increased sales 3.5x with a new commercial approach and by advocating a customer-centric attitude to increase client satisfaction and secure renewals. Personally closed those multi-million Pound Sterling sales opportunities.
  • Created the business case and plan to establish a 150-staff near-shoring development centre for one enterprise client.

Product founder & CEO

2011 - 2015
SimpleTax
  • Developed product vision and business case, securing funding from top UK venture capital firms and individual investors.
  • Drove user satisfaction to a Net Promoter Score of 83 by executing several “follow me home”-type initiatives that helped remove many friction points in the user journey and deliver significant improvements to customer success.
  • Led a team of three engineers, one designer, and one tester to develop and launch an online consumer income tax filing software, coordinating the launch with our marketing team.
  • Improved time-to-market of new features after revamping product development processes to adopt Kanban, feature flipping, and continuous deployment.
  • Doubled conversion rates by leveraging data from qualitative UX research, A/B testing, and usage analytics. Created clear decision-making processes to mitigate feature creep.

Senior Technology Consultant

2009 - 2011
Ministry of Social Security
  • Defined the functional and non-functional requirements for the payment channels project, that at the time managed over €24 billion in yearly cash flow.
  • Promoted to manage a team of 8 staff aiming to turn-around the Social Security Portal project that was over a year late.
  • Changed methodologies from Waterfall to Scrum, managed daily stand-ups, bi-weekly releases, the project backlog, and the sprint planning and retrospective meetings.
  • Improved product quality and stability by reassessing quality assurance processes and enabling the clear communication of acceptance criteria, resulting in the permanent reduction of major issues by over 90%.
  • Influenced stakeholders to abandon the proprietary portal solution, resulting in the adoption of a strategy based on flexible open source solutions, that enabled the team to deliver the first version of the product in just 3 months after a one year delay.

SimpleTax

Led product design and development of SimpleTax, growing it from launch to market leadership and an exit.

SimpleTax is a UK online tax filing product, that generates tax saving recommendations based on data analysis.

As the product founder, my responsibilities were:

- develop the product vision and managed the roadmap
- create a "follow-me-home" user research programme that delivered significant UX improvements and led to SimpleTax achieving a net promoter score of 83
- perform market and competitor research
- maintain up to date financial documents and investor reports
- manage investor relations with top investors in the UK, and lead the monthly board of directors meetings

Pixie

https://www.usepixie.com

Secured several purchase commitments from target customers by iterating on high fidelity mockups to capture user flows.

Pixie is a CRM for accountancy firms. It automates business processes relating to customer and work management, and creates a single-customer view available to the entire firm.

As a joint-venture, Pixie stakeholders required extensive customer validation and market research initiatives to ensure the market opportunity existed before committing resources.

Backstage

Managed the company's roadmap portfolio, launched payments and user verification initiatives, launched and grew the voiceover vertical to 30,000 performers.

Backstage is the leading platform for performing arts talent. Over two million performers have access to film, scripted TV, and digital productions.

Celso joined as the first dedicated product manager, working directly with the CPO and the CEO to oversee the voiceover vertical launch.

Celso then took over more responsibilities at Backstage:

- Managed the user verification initiative to keep talent safe by performing background checks on the buyer side of the marketplace.
- Researched and launched the Backstage payments platform to create a new revenue line for the company by allowing buyers to find, hire, and pay talent directly on Backstage's platform.
- Managed the company's roadmap of initiatives.
2009 - 2010

Executive Master of Business Administration Degree in Project Management

UAL - Universidade Autonoma de Lisboa - Lisbon, Portugal

1993 - 1996

Level III Diploma in Information Technology

CNAF - Lisbon, Portugal

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