Derek Anderson
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
McAllen, TX, United States
Toptal member since December 13, 2019
Derek has 20 years of experience growing businesses by thrilling customers and solving real-world problems. He has served in roles ranging from VP of marketing to CTO and CEO. His expertise bridges the gap between executive vision and technical execution when delivering complex solutions at an enterprise scale. With his hands-on style and “get it done” attitude, Derek has worked with global firms such as Facebook, Cisco, Cemex, Coca-Cola, Ford, and many SMBs and startups.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Early-stage Startups
- Enterprise SaaS
- Fintech
- Interim CPO
- Product Management
- Product Strategy
- Real Estate
- Technical Project Management
Work Experience
Product Master Data Management
Public Commercial Real Estate Company
- Took charge of the critical data infrastructure required for master data management (MDM) of four petabytes of data globally.
- Managed both political and technical aspects of revamping an organization that we maligned for its poor reputation for quality of service.
- Transformed how MDM was handled and improved match rates from under 60% to over 90% by implementing appropriate data filtering and scrubbing techniques, pushing quality to the edge systems.
- Improved net promoter score (NPS) from highly negative to positive in only 12 months, instilling confidence in the MDM process across the organization.
Product Manager
QLoop
- Performed a pre-launch MVP analysis against market requirements to confirm product market fit and suitability of the built platform.
- Provided the founder with a roadmap of changes needed before MVP launch and a backlog of changes for post-launch.
- Advised the founder on go-to-market strategies to best position their new product in the real estate space.
Technical Product Manager
19NORTH1 LLC
- Collaborated with the founder to define innovative multi-family pricing forecasts using AI.
- Built and tested AI models for pricing prediction.
- Implemented MVP product for live market testing with real estate development projects.
Product Owner
Syndigo
- Collaborated with executive leadership and product experts to perform gap analysis for a product merger.
- Designed and implemented an advanced document management system and workflow system.
- Enabled the business to close the product gaps to migrate customers over the course of nine months.
Product Manager
Tradeshare
- Collaborated with the founder to define the requirements for a stock and crypto lending application.
- Negotiated know your customer (KYC) and stock custodian capabilities and integration paths for development.
- Defined crypto protocols for buying, selling, and storing crypto for each customer account, including locking assets used as collateral.
Technical Product Manager
Invygo Tech FZ
- Cooperated with the client to redefine their accounting procedures.
- Developed new technical approaches to reconciling accounts with vendors and customers.
- Created on-demand pricing capabilities for vendors to initiate pricing changes on their marketplace platform.
Product Manager | CTO | Architect
New Economy Ventures SPC
- Designed and implemented finance protocols to manage stock, crypto, and other asset management custodianship and transactions.
- Collaborated with the founder to define a vision for a stock trading application.
- Designed UI for a mobile-first application and marketing websites.
Product Manager
Syndigo
- Consulted with client executive leadership on ways to improve their product management processes.
- Designed their next-generation workflow management solution that bridged the activities of buyers and sellers in their marketplace application.
- Ideated and designed a configurable administration capability that replaced hard-coded business rules.
Chief Product Officer | Chief Operating Officer
Visual Lease
- Designed, built, and scaled a B2B SaaS supply chain and contract management fintech product to over 3,000% in four years with no outside capital.
- Managed the marketing, product, QA, internal and global third-party engineering teams directly.
- Served as the primary SME for complex sales and implementation situations, defined repeatable processes to establish business requirements, determined the scope, and implemented solutions on a global scale.
- Oversaw the ongoing backlog management of the desired platform features and functions. Defined functionalities that enforced regulatory compliance. Led efforts to work with clients to determine the optimal user experience on various devices.
- Led the international expansion to Europe, GCC, and South America, including market research, product launch, and localization efforts.
- Managed the transition from private cloud hosting to the AWS Cloud.
- Provided solutions to companies like Azadea, Cemex, Coca-Cola, Rituals, MAF, Camping World, and hundreds of other companies.
- Led a team that implemented over 600 corporate clients integrating with their ERP and CRM systems via API, microservices, RPA, Auth0, and Okta.
- Leveraged blockchain technology to provide industry-leading documents and contract management security.
VP of Product and Marketing
Redwood Systems | Commscope
- Oversaw the Redwood System's strategy, supply chain, PR, product marketing, product development, and product management. Redwood Systems, acquired by CommScope in 2013, was a leading provider of intelligent building infrastructure controls.
- Designed and patented a system that provides low-voltage power, LED lighting control, and artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven IoT smart building sensors.
- Designed both hardware and software products from ideation to delivery. This platform included B2C native iOS and Android building control apps as well as a B2B2C smart building control platform.
- Leveraged sophisticated big data techniques, MapReduce, and AI to build predictive building controls.
- Ensured that our product suite exceeded customer expectations by providing an enhanced client ROI and satisfaction for firms such as Microsoft, Facebook, and Google.
- Positioned effectively Redwood Systems as a disruptive force in the market, driving exceptional levels of product demand and extreme revenue growth.
- Enabled a global third-party B2B distribution network, providing, ordering, fulfillment, support, and training for our global trade partner reseller network.
VP of Product | Product Owner
Skire | Oracle
- Led product management for Skire (now Oracle), which provides a business process-based marketplace platform for use by the largest global organizations to manage their most complex capital projects, contracts, and financial processes.
- Led a team that was responsible for the vision, roadmap, development, and go-to-market strategy (from ideation to launch) of the next generation of Skire's business process management platform.
- Designed, built, and launched a new product for project accounting. The result was a product that was responsible for over 30% of the companies go forward revenue.
- Spearheaded product ownership discipline as part of a highly successful rollout of agile development.
SVP of Technology Products
Colliers International
- Managed technology for Colliers International, a leader in global real estate.
- Led a team that managed multiple B2B SaaS fintech products and marketplaces that facilitated billions of dollars worth of property contracts and related financial transactions.
- Served as Colliers' chief technology evangelist, advocating internally for customer requirements and externally introducing technology possibilities to a conservative marketplace that is generally slow to adopt new technologies.
- Managed three separate third-party development teams in different global locations for different product lines.
SVP Product and Marketing | CEO
WorkplaceIQ | Accruent
- Hired to lead the international rollout of a revolutionary B2B SaaS real estate contract and transaction management product and was rapidly promoted to CEO of the firm.
- Transformed an internationally headquartered, engineering-focused organization into a US-based, customer-oriented cohesive team, reducing costs while increasing customer satisfaction and both top-line revenue and profitability.
- Delivered mission-critical financial solutions to firms such as Cisco, ExxonMobil, and Sports Authority.
Co-founder | CTO
Virtual Premise | CoStar
- Served as a co-founder and personally conceptualized, designed, and managed the development of the real estate market's first SaaS lease administration tool. The product has facilitated over $250 billion in annual real estate transaction volume.
- Oversaw and was directly responsible for the sales and implementation of clients such as Ford Motor Company, US Bank, Boeing, ADP, ACS, and URS.
- Bootstrapped the company's growth from founding to over $20 million in ARR over four years before selling the company to CoStar.
VP of Engineering
Enercom
- Led the delivery of the energy industry's first B2B2C SaaS energy sustainability product suite. This suite of tools facilitated some of the first web-based loyalty marketing programs deployed by major corporations in any market.
- Led a team that designed and built software that is still used by consumers each year to help reduce their personal energy consumption. In aggregate, it helps utility companies keep power prices low and lower their overall carbon footprint.
- Invented tools that enabled a redundant web-hosting capability for multi-tenant, SaaS delivery of products long before such was a common practice.
Project History
Mobile-first Consumer Travel Reservation Platform
Built a revolutionary travel reservation portal from the ground up through launch.
The system then uses AI to determine the best travel experience based upon the most streamlined and time effective itinerary. The system then produces the best travel routing between all locations along the trip and then executes the various reservations required. The system incorporates a full accounting and reservation stack and integrations with over 50 third-party tools via API and RPA.
IoT Sensor Network Platform | Smart Buildings
Led, from the ground up, the design of both hardware and software for an IoT sensor network product ecosystem.
The software platform included a B2B2C SaaS application that coordinated the back-haul of data to a data warehouse, a configurable dashboard for end users, and an AI layer to provide predictive building responses to the sensor and video inputs. The mobile component of the platform enabled people in the building to interact with the building's lighting, AC, and other environmental systems. Finally, the hardware components included third-party commercially available sensors plugged into our platform and a custom sensor where we did the electrical engineering and built the sensors themselves.
The same platform also applies to the agriculture market, where our sensors detect subtle and granular temperatures in plants to reveal potential health, quality, and yield issues across crops, and when combined with CO2, humidity, soil, and air quality sensors can drastically improve crop productivity.
Mobile Cash, Stock and Crypto Wallet with Lending Facility
Interconnected multiple third-party FINRA registered services to provide a seamless single pain of glass financial wallet.
Product Information Management and Syndication | eCommerce
Led an initiative to design a configurable workflow engine for eCommerce product information syndication.
Iconia LIMS for Seed to Sale | IoT Integration Platform
Built a B2B SaaS ERP/POS solution for the agriculture industry with fully integrated environmental and quality testing.
We automated the entire business workflow from planting the seed through the control of environmental grow conditions, to regulatory reporting and finally to the eCommerce, POS, and B2B trade engagement platforms.
Multi-step Delivery Optimization Mobile Application
Built a system to optimize the delivery schedules for various consumer goods.
We built these routes using AI to consider the starting and ending location of the delivery drivers, the locations of warehouses, locations of delivery locations, the volume of goods to be delivered, and traffic patterns (including things like making right turns only). These routes and delivery instructions were then published on a mobile-first platform similar to Uber or Lyft.
Healthcare ICD-9 Analysis | HIPAA Big Data
Built a system to analyze over a terabyte of ICD9 medical data to determine statistically expected outcomes and survivability.
Arabic Language Mobile Stock/Crypto Trading Application
Designed a stock trading platform to allow investors in the Middle East to easily purchase stock/crypto in markets across the globe.
Workflow Engine for a Commercial Master Data Management System
Led the design of a configurable workflow engine for managing data acquired from multiple third-party sources, the reconciliation and approval of that data, and the ultimate syndication of that data to third-party systems.
Oil Industry LIMS | High Volume Analytics
Deployed a LIMS system for a major oil company in Houston.
Published Database Development Author
Published five books on database design, development, and management.
Chairman of Industry Data Standards Group
https://www.oscre.org/Served as the chairman of the OSCRE Lease Administration Workgroup (2006-2009).
Management of Social Media Campaigns
Ran multiple political campaigns on social media platforms.
Education
Master's Degree in Software Management
Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Master's Degree in Strategic Business Management
Indiana University, Bloomington - Bloomington, IN, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Real Estate and Finance
Georgia State University - Atlanta, GA, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry
Vanderbilt University - Nashville, TN, USA
Certifications
Masters of Corporate Real Estate
CoreNet
Skills
Tools
Trello, HubSpot, Confluence, GitHub, Oracle ERP, Jira, Microsoft Power BI, Figma, Asana
Paradigms
Scrum, Agile, Web Architecture, Mobile App Design, User Testing, Microservices, Requirements Analysis, Hosting, Database Design, Agile Product Management, Agile Project Management, Team Development, B2B2C, Data Product Management, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C), Kanban, API Architecture, B2C, Marketplace Platforms, BPMN, HIPAA Compliance
Platforms
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Blockchain, Blockchain Platforms, Azure, Monday.com, Firebase, MuleSoft
Industry Expertise
Marketplaces, International Trade, High-tech Startups, Residential Real Estate, Asset Management, Financial Services, Professional Services, Real Estate, LED Lighting, Construction, Energy, Hospitality, Sustainability, Healthcare, Venture Capital, Capital Markets, Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, Chemistry, Agriculture, Oil & Gas, Credit Systems, Banking & Finance, Agrotech, Logistics, Transportation & Shipping, Insurance, Telecom Equipment & Solutions, Telecommunications, Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)
Other
Finance, Go-to-market Plans, Portfolio Management, Project Portfolio Management (PPM), Wireframing, Architecture, Business Strategy, Product Management, CMT, Innovation, Startups, Technical Product Management, Writing & Editing, Reports, Technical Reports, Technical Project Management, Communication, Competitive Strategy, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Integration, CTO, CIO, Software as a Service (SaaS), Enterprise SaaS, Document Management, Document Management Systems (DMS), Project Planning, Pricing Strategy, Product Ownership, Accounting, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Enterprise Architecture, Marketing Communications (MarCom), User Experience (UX), Data Analysis, Dashboards, Data Pipelines, Data, Branding, Leadership, Digital Marketing, Growth Marketing, Customer Acquisition, Product Launch, Growth, Growth Strategy, Early-stage Startups, Growth Marketing Product Manager, Launch Strategy, New Product Development, Mobile Apps, Product Discovery, Project Management, Interim CPO, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Product Coach, B2B Product Management, Mobile App Development, Web App Development, UX Flows, Wireframe to Product, Data Analytics, Web UX, Web UI, Web, Web Design, UX Design, Scope of Work (SOW), User Interface (UI), Requirements, Roadmaps, Team Building, API Integration, Requirements & Specifications, CRM Systems, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), QA Testing, QA Leadership, User Journey Maps, User Interviews, User Research, Market Fit, Product-market Fit, Distribution, RESTful Microservices, Business Analysis, Business, Business Logic, Business Management, Commercial Strategy, Commercials, Project Coordination, Startup Consulting, Rentals, Web Platforms, Business Process Management (BPM), Process Flows, Paid Search, Growth Hacking, Analytics, Product Strategy Consultant, Market Strategy and Research Product Manager, Marketing Services, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Client Management, Software Implementation, Technical Direction, Technical Leadership, Technical Requirements, Business Process Automation, Digital Services, Digital Payments, Payment Gateways, Online Payments, Payment Processing, Agile Product Delivery, Technology, Technology Trends, Technology Solutions, Solution Architecture, Proptech, Cryptocurrency, Budgeting, Planning, Discovery Workshops, Estimation & Planning, System Integration, Product Growth, Fintech, Financial Accounting, IFRS Financial Reporting, FASB ASC 842, Product Strategy, Product Design, Product Delivery, Contract, Workflow, Tech Sales, Implementation, SaaS, APIs, Business Planning, Product Planning, Databases, BPM, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Product Owner, Product Vision, New Products, Product Roadmaps, Thought Leadership, Team Management, Team Mentoring, Team Leadership, Technology Consulting, Digital Product Management, B2B, Internet of Things (IoT), Business to Business (B2B), Product Marketing, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Entrepreneurship, Commercial Real Estate Finance (CREF), Strategy, Master Data Management (MDM), Legal Technology (Legaltech), New Product Rollout, Go-to-market Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Corporate Strategy, Product Frameworks, Feature Prioritization, Customer Insights, Stakeholder Management, Product Leadership, Operations, Workflow Tools, Product Operations, Digital Transformation, Mentorship, Coaching, Product Consultant, Critical Thinking, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Product Descriptions, Sprint Planning, Agile Leadership, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Project Timelines, Business Intelligence (BI), Data Mining, User Personas, Interactive Prototypes, Personas, Web & Mobile Applications, Database-driven Web App Development, User Stories, MVP Design, Financials, Fintech Consultant, Market Research & Analysis, Ideation Workshops, Scope Management, Software Development Management, Feature Roadmaps, Backlog Management, Data Privacy, Vendor Selection, International Finance, Websites, Startup Funding, Fundraising, Financial Modeling, Head of Product, Director of Product, Business Administration, Product Positioning, Revenue Strategy, Business Cases, Pricing Models, Business Models, Web Applications, Staffing, Technical Business Analysis, Conceptualization, Geolocation, Ideation, Scheduling, Regulations, Product Analytics, Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), Scope, User Journeys, Research, Prototyping, Project Tracking, Market Research, UX Testing, Progress Reporting, Revenue Optimization, SaaS Product Management, Design, Platform Design, User Onboarding, Accounting Software, Software Development, Pitch Decks, Data Reporting, Estimations, Travel, Applications, Product Development, Client Portals, Web Development, PDF, Contract Management, Voice of the Customer (VoC), Data Management, Competition Research, Business Proposals, Investor Presentations, Project Review, Marketing Plans, Small Business, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Expansion Strategy, Process Improvement, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), App Product Management, Know Your Customer (KYC), Compliance, Company Strategy, Private Equity, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), CEO, COO, Pricing, Price Analysis, Business Development, Data Architecture, Cloud Architecture, Software Architecture, System Architecture, Amazon EC2, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Retail & Wholesale, Data Visualization, Data Warehousing, Fraud Prevention, Machine Learning, Personalization, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), On-page SEO, Email Marketing, Website Conversion, Mobile UI, GLP, ISO/IEC 27000, SOC Compliance, Android, iOS, Mobile Web, React Native, CRM APIs, Salesforce API, QA Automation, eCommerce Design, A/B Testing, Legal, Robotics Product Manager, Artificial Intelligence Product Manager, Machine Vision, Computer Vision, SQL, Affiliate Marketing, Vendor Management, Trading, Mobile Banking, Open Banking APIs, Crypto, Middleware, Data Warehouse Design, RESTful Development, IoT Protocols, Salesforce, Sensors & Actuators, Sales, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Java, .NET, Oracle RDBMS, UI Design, UX Thinking, Customer Analysis, Customer Research, Customer Interviews, Internationalization, International Growth, Publishing, Big Data, Localization, Product Sales, Production, REST APIs, API Databases, API Design, Business Consulting, Management Consulting, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Two-sided Marketplaces, Marketing, Documentation, Sales Enablement, Sales Operations, Operations Improvement, Digital Marketing Product Manager, GDPR, Mobile, Fantasy Sports, Gaming, B2C Marketing, Direct to Consumer (D2C), Airbnb, Wix, Mobile Applications, Booking Apps, Booking Systems, Investment Analysis, Cash Flow Modeling, Online Banking, International Data Privacy Regulations, Identity, GPS, JavaScript, Python, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), Medical Equipment, Data-driven Dashboards, Dashboard Development, Access Control, Embedded Systems, Videos, Consumer Technology, Web3, Training, Anti-money Laundering (AML), eCommerce, Spanish-English Translation, Lean Product Manager, Global Operations, Cruise Industry, Robotics, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), POS, MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Technical Architecture, Middle East, Cash Management, Best Practices, Management, Aha!, Loans & Lending, Lending, Consumer Lending, Manufacturing, Hadoop, Lean Product Development, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Game Development, Amplitude, Next.js, Telehealth, Smart Contracts, Blockchain Design, Medical Software, RDF, Biometrics, Mobile GPS, CRM Configuration, PIM, Finance APIs, Project Scoping, Healthcare Services, ClickUp, Claims, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Waste Management, Core ML, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Natural Language Processing (NLP)
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