Erick Watson
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Xi'an, Shaanxi, China
Toptal member since June 28, 2019
Erick is a fractional CPO and venture partner helping AI labs, Web3 protocols, and venture studios turn research into products. He has a documented revenue impact of over $1.33 billion, 4 startup exits, and $24.3 million raised. Erick is a former product leader at Google, Microsoft, and Protocol Labs, and is recognized as a Toptal Top 3% product manager.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Blockchain
- Business to Business (B2B)
- Growth
- Product Innovation
- Product Management
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- eCommerce
Work Experience
Managing Director | Product Consultant
SproutVest Advisers
- Founded SproutVest, a fractional CPO and venture strategy firm specializing in AI, blockchain, and SaaS commercialization. Clients include Google, Microsoft, Elevance Health, Angi, Protocol Labs, ASU, and others.
- Oversaw identity and access management (IAM) for two years for Elevance Health (formerly Anthem Healthcare), helping 34 million members, increasing YoY adoption and retention by 10% adding member CSAT by 7%, and reducing YoY inbound call volume by 6%.
- Implemented the enterprise data lake house platform for Edge by Ascential, processing hundreds of millions of eCommerce records for their flagship product: Market Share.
- Led a team at Blockchain Holdings to establish a 1,400 square feet, 1 megawatt, 2.1 petahash, tier 3 data center designed for GPU and ASIC blockchain mining.
- Partnered with Microsoft Research to spearhead product and program management of several AI and machine learning initiatives, including CodaLab, an MS Azure-hosted platform for research and data science competitions.
- Raised $24.3 million across multiple ventures, including Trensant ($6 million), Randamu ($3.3 million pre-seed), and G.A.E.M.S. ($15 million debt financing). Successfully achieved 4 startup exits and secured 2 granted patents.
Co-founder and CEO
Randamu
- Founded and scaled Randamu, builder of the dcipher network, a programmable settlement infrastructure that unifies payments, bridging, and compliance through threshold-cryptography-based automation, positioning the company as a leading web3 innovator.
- Raised $3.3 million in pre-seed funding led by PLVS Capital and strategic crypto foundations, and developed the company’s go-to-market strategy and token economic model for the upcoming $dcipher network launch.
- Built and led cross-functional teams spanning crypto, protocol eng., and ecosystem to deliver enterprise-grade products like OnlySubs, OnlySwaps, and OmniPay, enabling atomic, policy-driven transactions across DeFi, gaming, and AI-agentic payments.
Entrepreneur-in-residence (EiR)
Protocol Labs
- Led commercialization of drand, transforming a research-grade cryptography project into a market-ready decentralized service powering verifiable randomness and trustless automation across Web3, gaming, and AI applications.
- Built strategic partnerships and ecosystem adoption, aligning technical capabilities with real-world use cases in DeFi, on-chain governance, and digital gaming, resulting in measurable growth in developer engagement and product visibility.
- Developed scalable business models and go-to-market frameworks that positioned drand as the industry standard for bias-resistant randomness and threshold cryptography, strengthening Protocol Labs’ leadership in applied cryptographic infrastructure.
Principal Product Manager
Angi.com
- Increased website conversion rates by 8%, resulting in tens of millions of dollars per year in additional gross revenue.
- Reduced abandonment/bounce rates by 3%, retaining tens of millions of dollars per year in gross revenue.
- Developed a data science-driven experimentation framework for rapid prototyping and A/B testing of search engine marketing (SEM) tactics.
Senior Product Manager
- Spearheaded product development focused on identifying market dynamics that generate incremental annual recurring revenue (IARR) for Google search advertising channel partners and sellers.
- Advocated for product needs with engineering and management teams. Aligned direct reports in the design and launch, minimizing distraction to focus on product priorities.
- Increased IARR for Google search ads by $1.22 billion, enhancing consumer demand customer insight and enabling sellers to discover prioritized opportunities that are hard to detect in the Connect Sales CRM search trends and benchmarks pages.
Principal Digital Product Manager
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield
- Improved member adoption and retention by over 10% YoY by leading product management and DevOps for identity and access management infrastructure supporting Elevance Health's 34+ million members using SAFe methodologies.
- Increased member CSAT by over 7% YoY by creating unified, personalized experiences for members with strategic partners such as Google and Fidelity Investments, leveraging data science insights and the implementation of HL7 and FHIR APIs.
- Reduced inbound call volumes by 6% YoY by leading member self-service and call reduction initiatives linking interactive voice response to customer records via an online virtual assistant programmed to handle the majority of call drivers.
Chief Product Officer
Quantarium
- Co-founded and transformed an AI software engineering startup into a mature cloud-computing business for the real estate industry, developing and executing a customer-focused, scalable product and commercialization strategy.
- Oversaw product development—including marketing, prioritization, and lifecycle management—CRM, and sales operations processes, managing a team of eight and a P&L of $10 million.
- Led the company acquisition and designed and launched a corporate spinout from the parent company to position the company for an over 100% growth rate and unlock latent business value.
- Drove the development of a predictive analytics SaaS platform and API, ranked first in coverage and accuracy by the industry's top benchmarking firm, using AI, computer vision, and machine learning to cover all 105 million residential US households.
- Launched an AWS B2B eCommerce, realizing a greater distribution of products and services and generating over $12 million in new sales opportunities.
- Spearheaded the development of a service powered by Quantarium Amazon Alexa, allowing channel partners to offer virtual assistant self-service functionality for mortgage servicing workflows to end users.
Co-founder | Chief Product Officer
Trensant
- Led the development and commercialization of Trensant's patented portfolio of graph databases, text analytics pipelines, machine learning algorithms, and SaaS APIs with monthly venture funding.
- Applied an NLP processing pipeline to structured and unstructured social media data sources to predict the 2016 US presidential election by one electoral vote.
- Secured board approval and implemented a new SaaS business model, assembling value proposition, sales motion, and P&L to achieve geometric revenue growth with only linear increases in cost.
- Launched a new SaaS API and landed numerous channel partners, including Microsoft, Domo, Qlik, Tableau, and PointLogic.
Non-executive Director (NED) and Board Advisor
G.A.E.M.S., Inc.
- Led the finance committee, raising $15 million in debt financing to fund supply chain operations and product manufacturing in China.
- Focused on assisting the leadership team with corporate governance, business planning, intellectual property, finance, executive compensation, and M&A strategy.
- Managed the CEO Search and Executive Compensation committees, which secured a new CEO for the company and established competitive compensation guidelines for all corporate directors.
Principal Program Manager | Artificial Intelligence
Microsoft
- Led the technical program management for several artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives on behalf of Microsoft Research’s Academic Outreach team.
- Developed and led the functional design of core features for Project CodaLab, and over 60 online executable papers for computer scientists to enhance productivity and consistency in data-driven research.
- Hosted and enabled more than 300 machine learning data science competitions.
- Identified and retained collaborators to specify, design, develop, and launch http://www.codalab.org as an open-source, GitHub-hosted project.
- Established and grew a highly specialized and technical community of machine learning experts from zero to over 3,000 members.
Director | Product Management
Metavana
- Launched the original NPS SaaS API, enabling real-time NPS measurement based on online human sentiment.
- Designed and implemented a new SaaS business model that enabled exponential revenue growth without corresponding cost increases.
- Recognized by Gartner Group as a 2013 Cool Vendor in content and social analytics.
Director | Business Strategy and Market Development
Microsoft
- Established new partnerships on behalf of Microsoft Research Asia for product development, technology transfer, and strategic sourcing with software development partners.
- Led Microsoft's innovation and market access agenda with the Chinese government, industry, and academia.
- Managed a USD $150 million P&L supporting an organization of 130 people.
- Grew Microsoft's investment in the China partner ecosystem by over 33% or USD $50 million.
- Established the company's first formal market research function focused on Microsoft Partners in China, unleashing a wave of Sino-centric insight.
Project History
CodaLab Platform for Reproducible Research and Data Science Competitions
Developed and led the functional design of core features for Project CodaLab.
I was involved in developing and leading the functional design of core features for Project CodaLab. I also led the technical program management for several artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives on behalf of Microsoft Research’s Academic Outreach team.
Human Opinion Search Engine
Led the development of a patented Internet Human Opinion Search Engine and resulting knowledge graph.
Led the development of a patented Internet Human Opinion Search Engine and resulting knowledge graph, which led to the parent company being acquired for this technology.
Blockchain Mining Data Center
Led the design, construction, and operation of a boutique 1,400 square foot, 1 Megawatt, 2.1 PetaHash, Tier 3 data center.
Led a team of industry experts in the specification, site selection, construction, provisioning, and operation of a Tier 3 data center designed for ASIC blockchain mining of Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies. This included the definition of all operational processes, such as maintenance, security, power, and heat management.
ASU Pocket | Portable & Secure Digital Wallet
http://pocket.asu.edu/Cultivated industry and public partnerships, handling all partner onboarding and training for ASU Pocket, an open source blockchain wallet enabling users to carry and manage their verifiable learning credentials anywhere.
ASU Pocket is a portable, secure, and verified digital wallet for learning, work, and life. ASU aspires to what President Crow calls the fifth realm of education: infinitely scalable learning. In service to that vision, we need infinitely scalable ways to showcase that learning and match it to jobs of the future. Learner empowerment is the most vital accelerant to accomplish this.
Under the moniker Pocket, we designed a solution built on trust that offers nearly unlimited capacity for students to capture their learner journey and connect their skills with jobs of the future.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics
Louisiana State University - Louisiana, USA
Certifications
Google Ads Search Certification
Google Digital Academy (Skillshop)
Google Analytics Certification
Google Display & Video Certification
Google Digital Academy (Skillshop)
Executive Data Science Specialization
Coursera
Skills
Tools
Jira, Google Analytics, Google Workspace, Adobe Analytics, Asana
Paradigms
Agile, Data Product Management, Change Management, Agile Project Management
Platforms
Blockchain, Google Ads
Industry Expertise
Healthcare, Financial Services, Venture Capital
Other
Program Management, Project Management, eCommerce, Startups, APIs, Business Development, Marketing Strategy, Competitive Strategy, Finance, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Big Data, Data Science, Software as a Service (SaaS), Intellectual Property, Microsoft Azure, Machine Learning, Salesforce, Angel Investing, Digital Marketing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Partner Management, Strategic Partnerships, Product Management, Product Marketing, Innovation, Growth, Strategy, A/B Testing, Analytics, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Backlog Management, Business Intelligence (BI), Business to Business (B2B), Cloud Computing, Community Development, Go-to-market (GTM) Strategies, Market Research, P&L Management, R&D, Customer Engagement, Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Senior Executive Management, Leadership, Google Search Console, Product Innovation, Digital Product Management, Squarespace, Fintech, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Pitch Decks, Storytelling, Predictive Analytics, Product Roadmaps, Technical Product Management, Business Analysis, MVP Design, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Data Centers, Early-stage Startups, Distributed Team Management, Digital Transformation, Workflow Automation, Project Discovery, AI Integration, Data Analytics, Product Strategy, Product Discovery, Product Ownership, Discovery Workshops, Prototyping, System Architecture, System Integration, Workflow, Business Process Improvement (BPI), API Integration, Large Language Models (LLMs), Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), YouTube SEO, YouTube Marketing, YouTube API, Google Display Network, Cybersecurity, Web Scraping, Full-stack, Agentic Frameworks, Agentic AI, Procurement, Vibe Coding, Product Procurement Manager, AI Agents, Automation, Notion, Cryptography
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