Eric Lemay
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Montreal, QC, Canada
Toptal member since July 22, 2019
Eric is a senior product management leader and startup executive for the world's most admired companies—F500s like Apple, Accenture, HCA Healthcare, Bloomberg, and Equifax—and fast-growing startups like Moka (acquired), A.Team, Braintrust, Nourish (YC), ClearEstate, and BoomPop. He launched products used by millions of people in fintech, retail, banking, travel and hospitality, and eCommerce sectors. Eric's superpower is speed. He validates, builds, and scales products quickly and profitably.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Product Lead | Consultant
HCA Healthcare (F500)
- Worked with the innovation arm of HCA Healthcare (F500) to build a system that reduces nurse overwhelm, enables equitable distribution of workload and improves patient care.
- Built a system that systematized patient work intensity (how much effort to provide patient care) and leveraged nurse schedules, competencies, and proficiency to build an equitably-distributed nurse-to-patient assignment.
- Helped head nurses and facility supervisors get a view of the overall health of their facilities.
VP of Product | Executive Team
ClearEstate
- Built a tech-enabled estate planning/estate settlement offering in North America, helping families optimize their legacy and settle the estate of a loved one.
- Enabled individuals/families to create estate planning documents (e.g., will), consolidate their assets, and get recommendations to optimize the legacy they leave behind.
- Hired, trained, and led a product team of seven people—product managers, product designers, and product researchers.
- Served as a VP of product and executive and helped scale a company from 25 to 100 people across product, engineering, operations, sales and marketing, and partnerships.
- Secured large-scale partnerships with several of Canada's Big Six banks and largest independent wealth firms.
- Raised more than $21 million from top-tier fintech investors.
- Built a high contribution-margin (profit) business in less than 3.5 years.
Head of Product | Executive Team
Boompop
- Built a virtual events marketplace and grew it to a 22 million run rate in less than 13 months. Customers feature the world's most admired companies like Google, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Accenture, Samsung, etc.
- Led the creation of a new line of business: corporate gifting. Brought it to the market-product fit.
- Designed all key end-to-end operational workflows for the business, from booking received to the event held, and delivered kits for events.
Product Lead Consultant
Apple
- Led a small, fast-moving team of six—a product manager, a designer, and four engineers—for Apple's most secretive/innovative projects.
- Built prototypes to help Apple validate innovative retail experiences.
- Delivered game-changing digital experiences in all Apple stores (details under NDA).
Product Lead (Consultant)
Bloomberg
- Led a team of eight consultants—six engineers, a junior PM, and a designer.
- Researched the problem by interviewing Bloomberg teams and conducting workshops.
- Led product strategy, designed and launched a new product, and led change management initiatives.
- Provided ongoing status updates and demos to Bloomberg executives.
- Participated in scoping and selling additional services actively.
VP of Product | Founding Team | Employee #1
Moka
- Spearheaded the product/design team—two PMs and two product designers—and a team of 10 engineers.
- Owned the vision, values, strategy, roadmap, and products (native apps, back-end workflows, third-party integrations, and more).
- Conducted market research and ongoing customer discovery through face-to-face interviews, in-app chat, and user testing.
- Led partnership talks with banks, fintechs, and mortgage and insurance brokerages.
- Hired, built, and trained teams (product, design, customer success, marketing, and operations).
- Designed, built, and automated workflows (customer success and financial operations).
Director of Product
Porter and Sail
- Led a team of three—a product manager, a product designer, and a growth specialist.
- Owned the vision, USP, roadmap, design, and go-to-market strategy.
- Supervised the web and native apps (iOS and Android).
- Deployed new revenue streams growing revenue by 80% in six months, and lowered COGS by 65% over the same period.
- Owned pitching for the largest accounts (boutique hotel chains).
- Participated in M&A talks for a potential acquisition by a travel giant.
Head of Product | Risk
Paysafe Group
- Built the company's global onboarding tool for all eCommerce businesses.
- Led the product strategy, roadmap, design, build, and go-to-market of all risk products.
- Created business cases, pricing strategies, sensitivity, and analyses.
- Designed and deployed a proprietary risk rules engine and workflow tool for evaluating merchant and transactional risk.
- Productized an internal capability and sold risk management-as-a-service to our partners.
Consultant
Accenture
- Led teams of 20–30 engineers in both onshore and offshore teams to deliver large-scale projects for Fortune 500 companies.
- Collaborated with global Accenture experts to productize internal capabilities.
- Interviewed client teams and captured needs and requirements.
- Managed onshore and offshore development teams (India, Mauritius).
- Led change management initiatives and training with large client teams.
Project History
Delivered Apple's Most Secretive/Innovative Retail Products
http://www.apple.comLed a small, fast-moving team of consultants to help Apple Retail innovate more quickly and deliver its most secretive/innovative products.
One product we built for Apple Retail is to enable customers to get an Apple Watch band size recommendation by hovering their hand above an iPhone placed on a table. This leverages cutting-edge technology under the hood and delivers a magical retail experience to all Apple customers. Other projects are under NDA.
I led product management and the team of consultants and managed the relationship with Apple.
Built + Exited Fastest-growing Fintech in Canada
http://www.moka.aiLed the product team and built the fastest-growing fintech in Canada. Successfully acquired in April 2021 by Mogo (TSE: MOGO). Moka is the Acorns of Canada. Round up your purchases and invest the spare change.
• Defined roadmap, built and scaled products, and led teams.
• First full-time hire.
• Ran betas with a community of power users.
• Drove early marketing bringing CAC from $23 to $16.
• Built the customer success team.
• Automated and scaled financial operations.
• Worked with legal to build brokerages.
• Led partnership talks with banks and fintech.
Highlights:
• Fastest-growing fintech in Canada.
• Largest robo-advisor in Canada (clients served).
• Acquired Tactex Asset Management.
• Enabled Canadians to donate to over 10,000 charities.
• 25x user growth, 35x revenue from Seed to Series A.
• 73% of new signups upgraded to the premium product.
• Increased MRR from $45,000 to $100,000 in one month.
• Acquired users at less than $10 CAC (blended).
• Top fintech app in App Store with a 4.5-star rating.
Built + Scaled Team Experiences Platform
http://boombox.eventsActed as head of product and founding PM and helped build virtual events and corporate gifting marketplace. rew it to a $22 million run rate in less than 13 months.
Boompop is on a mission to help teams connect on a human level through virtual events, IRL experiences, corporate gifting, and a virtual hub for managing team experiences.
Boompop is one of the fastest-growing startups and is now a virtual events/corporate gifting spaces leader. I head up product management.
My Achievements:
• 22 million run rate in less than 13 months
• Immediate payback on each event sold and LTV/CAC > 3
• Leader in the virtual events space
• Upcoming leader in the corporate gifting space
• Funded by investors behind Airbnb, Uber, SpaceX, Hims and Hers, etc.
Effective Data Management and Collaboration of Bloomberg Teams
https://www.bloomberg.com/Launched a product to help Bloomberg teams manage data better, collaborate more effectively, and build new data products.
As product lead, I led a squad of ten consultants comprised of product managers, product designers, and engineers.
This product:
• Helps data teams document and collaborate on Bloomberg's Global Exchange Data Model.
• Promotes a pathway to a single source of truth.
• Communicates and enforces Bloomberg's standards throughout the business.
• Helps exchange data leads communicate data requirements to engineering better.
• Enables Bloomberg to consistently deliver complex global Exchange data to downstream customers.
• Makes end-to-end data lineage available to the entire business, enabling customer-facing enterprise teams to serve customers better.
Go-to-market Strategy for Equifax
Defined a step-by-step go-to-market strategy for the largest credit bureau in the world.
We analyzed a big market problem, interviewed prospective customers, and developed a go-to-market strategy to take a product to a new vertical. Details are under NDA.
I led the product and a team of consultants.
Global Merchant Onboarding Platform (Payments)
Product lead for a new global merchant onboarding solution for one of the largest payments companies in the world.
A unifying global online application strategy that maximizes new account adoption and revenue across the company's products and regions and targets users through a scalable, efficient, and secure user enrollment experience.
I was the product lead on this high-visibility product. I ran the product design, build, deployment, and go-to-market of several product iterations.
High-level solution:
• Onboarding front-end application.
• Risk Management back-end.
• Built on top of risk adjudication (risk scores and workflow tools) and identity modules with integrations with third-party credit bureaus.
• Workflows entirely adapted to the merchant's region.
• Partner-friendly, enabling our partners to board their merchants.
Most notable win:
• Onboarding time slashed from 21 days down to a few hours.
Guest Engagement Platform for the Hospitality Industry
Built a guest engagement platform enabling hoteliers to engage and up-sell the guest across the entire travel experience.
The challenges:
• 35% of available inventory is available for an upgrade every day.
• 60% of spa rooms go unused.
• Serious money left on the table: The hotel industry is severely lagging behind the airline industry. Hotel ancillary revenue only represents 10% of total revenue (vs. 30% in the airline industry).
A new take on the hospitality industry:
• Create a guest engagement platform enabling hotels to engage and up-sell their guests across the entire travel experience.
• Add an easy check-in solution.
• Omni-channel messaging (email, apps, and SMS).
• Build a merchandising engine, enabling hoteliers to up-sell on-site amenities and TripAdvisor tours/attractions (first partner on API).
• Add a ticketing back-office, streamlining operations.
• Cross-platform functionality: iOS, Android, and web apps.
The results:
• $30 per check-in (average basket of $105) of new ancillary revenue.
• More than a 12% guest NPS increase on average.
The success of our new platform created a new norm in the hospitality industry. It attracted the interest of the biggest players in travel, leading to the company's acquisition.
Validation and Successful Beta Launch for a Full-stack Fintech
Ran the beta and validated a new way for millions of Canadians to get advice and purchase financial products.
Initiatives:
• Interviewed (personally) more than 100 Canadians over several months.
• Built prototype and conducted user testing.
• Closed ten key revenue partnerships, including banks, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, insurers (life, car), and financial planners, to name a few.
• Launched a very cheap, mostly offline beta with key segments of users to educate and promote financial products.
Highlights:
• After a few months of experiments, we achieved a 5% closing rate on mortgages, 7% on tenant insurance, and 9% on financial planning with minimal additional engineering involved.
• Gained quick buy-in from leadership to double down on these three verticals and continue pursuing new ones.
Asset Analytics (Large Utilities Company)
Led application testing, deployment efforts, and change management initiatives for three separate client lines of businesses.
I managed the onshore and offshore development teams (India and Mauritius) for all aspects of the application testing of algorithms (more than 1,000) and station risk scores. I also led change management and training initiatives post-deployment. The project was delivered successfully over several waves (years).
New platform to help Chief Security Officers mitigate human risk
https://elevatesecurity.com/solutions/engage/Led a team of consultants to build a new product for Elevate Security, a SF-based startup, helping them raise a Series A round of financing
Engage ingests and analyzes data from across the enterprise to identify and score individual risk based on behaviors and attack history.
Armed with visibility into the people, behaviors, and patterns, they can build an organizational human risk profile and engage employees via campaigns to build improvement plans and promote better behaviors.
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Testimonial (on LinkedIn profile)
• Robert Fly (CEO): "I've really enjoyed seeing Eric lead his teams. He brings a ton of energy and focus as a PM and it shows in how high functioning, outcome-oriented and fast his teams deliver. Kudos to Eric for the drive, directness, and passion he brings every day!"
Education
Program Graduate in Startup Incubator
Founder Institute - San Francisco, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Engineering
McGill University - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Certifications
Project Management Professional (PMP)
PMI
Skills
Tools
Trello, Asana, Jira, ETL, Figma
Paradigms
Rapid Prototyping, Agile, Scrum, B2C, B2B2C, Agile Product Management, Agile Workflow, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C), Agile Project Management, Kanban
Industry Expertise
Banking & Finance, Marketplaces, Hospitality
Other
Management Consulting, User Experience (UX), Discovery, Product Planning, Native Mobile Apps, Web & Mobile Applications, Fintech, Product Roadmaps, Product Vision, eCommerce, Customer Discovery, Product-market Fit, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), iOS, Android, Intercom, Remote Work, Wireframing, B2B, Mobile, Product Management, Business Analysis, Requirements, Product Strategy, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Models, Product Design, Product Marketing, Product Frameworks, Innovation, Product Ownership, Product Discovery, Product Delivery, B2B Product Management, Business to Consumer (B2C), Communication, Marketing Strategy, Marketing, Design, Business Strategy, Growth, Strategy, Market Research, Monetization, Monetization Models, A/B Testing, Content, Travel, Market Research & Analysis, UX Research, Analytics, Funnel Optimization, Business Development, Partnerships, Business Cases, Sales, Financial Modeling, React Native, Multi-sided Marketplaces, Two-sided Marketplaces, Go-to-market Strategy, Branding, Digital Marketing, Booking Apps, Product Growth, Web App Development, User Interface (UI), Lead Generation, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Beta Programs, Retail & Wholesale, Roadmaps, Web Applications, Fundraising, Growth Marketing, Startups, React, Prototyping, Node.js, Web UI, Social Networks, API Integration, Competition Research, Early-stage Startups
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