Connie Kwan
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Menlo Park, CA, United States
Toptal member since February 22, 2019
Connie Kwan is a storyteller and 4-time chief product officer from Silicon Valley who works with B2B SaaS companies. Her 20 years of product leadership experience spans AI, SaaS, digital health, and energy (Atlassian, MSFT, CY, and SPWR). Connie companies and advises CEOs on becoming product-led. Think of her as your fractional CPO and sounding board for design, marketing, product, and engineering.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Enterprise SaaS
- Innovation
- Interim CPO
- Marketing Strategy
- Product Management
- Product Marketing
- Product Strategy
Work Experience
Head of AI Product and Engineering
SparkAI
- Defined the MVP by interviewing 100+ customers to align product scope with real-world needs.
- Took the project from zero to first revenue, overseeing and executing on all aspects from user research to design, to product specification and engineering.
- Evaluated and selected three leading LLMs and established the full tech stack for production.
- Hired and led the engineering team, owning all technical decisions from infrastructure to deployment.
Storyteller and Chief Product Officer
Product Maestro
- Delivered new revenue streams via product-market-fit expansion.
- Trained 500+ product managers on storytelling skills using our proprietary storyteller-type system.
- Delivered knowledge as the keynote speaker for eCornell University on the topic of storytelling in leadership.
- Helped 20 clients tell crystal clear stories about their products with Product Maestro's storytelling workshops (custom).
- Built, advised, and restructured design, product, and marketing teams to enable the next stage of growth.
Chief Product Officer
Nobody Studios
- Demonstrated proven ability to drive innovation and launch five products from 0 to 1 within a year.
- Established a fast experimentation culture for the company.
- Raised funding for one of the companies to launch them outside the studio.
Chief Product Officer
Chartbeat
- Established the innovation pipeline and the discipline for evaluating the product-market fit.
- Led workshops to arrive at the product vision and clarify their two-year product roadmap.
- Restructured the Product and Design team to reduce overhead and increase productivity.
VP Product and Marketing
OMG Network
- Shipped a layer 2 Etherum (OMG) network that reduces gas cost by 3-10 times. OMG token value went up 6x.
- Cultivated a marketplace of vendors using OMG network including DeFi, banks, and NFTs.
- Led the re-brand of the company from OmiseGO to OMG Network.
Chief Product Officer
Pivot
- Co-founded and led a team of over 20 professionals to successfully deliver a product, including five direct reports in project management and tech support, alongside a cross-functional group of four designers and 15 engineers.
- Transformed the Carrot product from the ground up, converting academic papers into a year-long, mobile-accessible format.
- Pitched to investors as a leadership team member for Series A raise.
- Identified tech to enable faster MVP delivery of over 600 mobile screens, cutting development time to half.
- Sourced and integrated vendor tech, including Layer, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Tableau, WordPress, and Mixpanel.
- Contributed to product strategy, product go-to-market, company culture, and Agile development.
Head of Product, Marketplace and Developer Ecosystem
Atlassian
- Built and led a team to deliver the second largest B2B apps marketplace and grew from $20 million ARR to $200 million ARR with 2000+ apps from a community of 800+ vendors, 100% YoY growth of add-ons in 2016.
- Drove product roadmap definition and analysis of specific market needs.
- Defined pricing and packaging strategies across behind-the-firewall and SaaS business models.
- Built a vendor advisory board of key partners to give input on a two-year roadmap.
- Led team on two re-designs and one architectural re-factor to boost UX and team agility.
- Led rent vs buy decisions such as rental of Algolia search service and eCommerce service.
- Led curation programs to improve inventory quality, example programs include Atlassian Verified, and Cloud Security program (CSA backed).
- Co-produced marketing events Atlascamp and Connect Week to grow apps and dev community; Partnered with BD to identify new integration partners.
Senior Product Manager
Microsoft
- Collaborated with world-class partners to co-design their News experience within Microsoft's Win8 News app to bring news sources such as AP, WSJ, and NYT to millions of users worldwide.
- Launched 15 inaugural partners in the Microsoft News app including Wall Street Journal, AP, Reuters, New York Times, and News Corp.
- Shipped the first Microsoft News app to millions of Windows 8 users in 40 languages.
- Drove product changes to reduce partner launch time by 1/10th via infrastructure standardization.
Product Consultant
Sourcemap
- Built social media campaign and did competitive analysis.
- Presented on stage at Google Tech Talk and Natural Products Expo West as a spokesperson.
CEO
RealMealz
- Designed and built a web-app on Ruby on Rails from the ground up with the CTO.
Product Manager
Sunpower
- Headed the product roadmap and product innovation.
Product Manager
Cypress Semiconductor
- Oversaw a dual-ported memory product used to power cell phone towers by companies like Siemens.
- Drove pricing strategies that resulted in a 12% growth in profit.
- Supported sales to achieve $6 million in design wins.
- Drove programs to identify over $2 million in new business opportunities.
Project History
Atlassian Marketplace
http://marketplace.atlassian.com/Grew the marketplace from $40 to 400 million ARR. Managed partner relations and marketplace products, including cloud and server implementations.
Pivot
Led a team of 24 to ship an Android and iOS app from zero to a full health program for tobacco addiction in less than one year.
AI Thought Leadership Machine
https://getSparkAI.com/Ideate, scope, build, and sell (early revenue) an AI for building thought leadership on LinkedIn. Users can talk to our AI for 15 minutes a week and have their thought leadership built for them.
Built specifically for B2B experts, executives, founders, and coaches, SparkAI solves the real bottleneck in thought leadership: time, consistency, and authenticity. While consumer content can skate by on trends and memes, professional voices need nuance, accuracy, and trust. SparkAI captures your ideas through a smart AI interview, then uses proprietary models to craft authentic, engaging posts tailored to your audience and goals. You get smart scheduling, real-time analytics, and continuous optimization—all without lifting a finger.
This isn't just another scheduler. SparkAI acts like an AI-powered cofounder for your personal brand. It adapts, learns, and improves over time—amplifying your voice, not replacing it.
Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree in Sustainable Management
Presidio Graduate School - San Francisco, California
Executive Program in Product Management
University of Berkeley Haas - Berkeley, California
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering
University of Waterloo - Waterloo, Ontario
Skills
Tools
Slack, Confluence, GitHub, Jira, Trello, Zoom
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, B2B2C, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C), Scrum, HIPAA Compliance
Platforms
Blockchain
Industry Expertise
Healthcare
Other
B2B, Interim Management, Software as a Service (SaaS), Enterprise SaaS, Software, Software Ecosystems, Positioning, Product Ownership, Product Discovery, Sales Enablement, Product Strategy, Remote Work, Product Management, Requirements, Product Roadmaps, User Research, Business Models, Product Frameworks, Innovation, Roadmaps, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Proof of Concept (POC), Backlog Grooming, Business Analysis, Feature Prioritization, Backlog Management, Estimations, Technical Product Management, Digital Marketing, Product Engineering, Marketing, Product Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Interim CPO, Go-to-market Plans, Crypto, Market Research, Market Strategy and Research Product Manager, Design, AI Agents, Legal Technology (Legaltech), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data-informed Decisions, Cryptocurrency, Cryptocurrency Payments, Non-fungible Tokens (NFT), Leadership, Public Speaking, Design Management, Fundraising, Executive Reporting, Execution, Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS), Engineering, Sprint Planning, Prompt Engineering, Data, Business, Strategy, B2B Marketing, Mobile, FDA, Sales, User Experience (UX)
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