Hooman Hodjat
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Danville, CA, United States
Toptal member since May 19, 2020
Hooman is an entrepreneurial product leader, an MBA with a degree in computer science and a successful track record with startups to global enterprises in building digital solutions, removing key business and customer frictions, and executing through commitment, communication, and collaboration to deliver results, including the founding, design, launch, and acquisition of PickupZone and leadership of global product strategy for Click & Collect at eBay, generating $250 million in annual revenue.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Product Strategy
- Startups
- Technical Product Management
- Two-sided Marketplaces
- eCommerce
Work Experience
Consultant
Yanalex
- Designed and built an AI-based mental performance coaching tool for a mental performance coaching program.
- Led the team in designing and developing an inventory scraping, management, and integration for NiceKicks, a web-based, affiliate marketing, high-end shoe retailer.
- Developed an interactive retail customer experience platform, enabling AI chat experiences within physical retail.
CTO, Head of Hardware and Software Products, Sales, and Operations
Virtual Visions
- Led hardware and software development teams in the design, delivery, and operation of interactive digital mirrors for endless aisles, virtual try-ons, and signage solutions at leading retailers like Lululemon, Uniqlo, Nordstrom, Zales, and Pagoda.
- Developed the product strategy as part of the business development with retail clients.
- Managed the day-to-day Agile product development process, leading to the complete design, development, and deployment of products in less than 90 days.
- Delivered over $2.5 million in hardware sales, $1 million in software sales, and $1 million in recurring subscription revenues.
- Led the experimentation of using large language models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI automation (n8n), and vibe coding to solve real operational problems, building a knowledge assistant for our customer support team.
- Led the product discovery, design, development, and go-to-market strategy for a supplemental app to a CPG product to increase customer engagement, usage, and lifetime value.
Head of Product
Credo Mobile
- Led all product development initiatives for the company.
- Developed product strategy and roadmap including migration from Salesforce to Zendesk for the customer service team and implementation of Magento for the eCommerce management platform.
- Led the team in the complete migration from Salesforce to Zendesk in three months, including customer service workflow optimization and integration with Zendesk APIs.
Senior Manager of Product Management – Personalization
Staples
- Designed product strategy and roadmap for a multi-dimensional, curated personalization and loyalty program focused on increasing AOS and AOV by 10% each.
- Led the product management team to increase personalization revenue by 50% by analyzing the business customer’s purchase journey, leveraging new algorithms and A/B testing.
- Leveraged Lean Product methodology to validate an innovative SMB procurement service.
Global Head of Product, Click & Collect
eBay
- Built a strategic product plan for globally scalable, carrier-agnostic Click & Collect service, enabling more than $6 billion in GMV to be eligible for in-store pickup and return across 700 retail stores.
- Oversaw the end-to-end customer experience on eBay's site and mobile app development, including in-store team experience for a frictionless, efficient fulfillment process.
- Formulated a frictionless product strategy at eBay to build Click & Collect, a global service enabling in-store pickup and return; the UK launch delivered $250 million annualized GMV.
Head of Product, PickupPoints
ShopRunner
- Drove the requirements, design, and implementation of customer and retail experience, including the mobile application, MDM-integration, and kiosks for PickupPoints to a 150-store service launch.
- Led the product strategy for launch with key retailers including 7-Eleven and ToysRUs.
- Led the post-launch product operations and analytics.
Founder, CEO
PickupZone
- Built innovative package delivery service targeting “last mile” problem for 1 billion annual residential deliveries within dense metropolitan markets.
- Demonstrated service value proposition from a single neighborhood test to a multi-site launch by understanding customer adoption, usage patterns, in-store conversion and AOV.
- Executed a scalable multi-city roll-out with Walgreens, resulting NPS > 90% and 67% purchase rate.
- Guided the company to successful acquisition by ShopRunner.
Product Manager
CogoLabs
- Developed a used car lead generation site with quick turnover.
- Achieved an annualized revenue run-rate of $4.67 million in four months.
- Contributed to the acquisition process for Motovy.com by ADP in December 2011.
Director of IT and eCommerce
Decathlon
- Launched koodza.fr, Decathlon’s first eCommerce distribution channel.
- Implemented logistics and fulfillment systems and processes as well as integrations with carriers.
- Set strategic direction for retail systems and infrastructure, leading a team of system engineers, software developers, system analysts, and project managers.
- Proposed and led a $1.5 million international project to overhaul the retail ERP and business systems, delivering over $1 million in annual ROI.
- Led a cross-functional team to reduce inventory shrinkage from 2.6% to 0.7% through process analysis, optimization, and development of new software tools.
Management Consultant, Strategy
Fidelity Investments
- Completed a value-chain analysis of Fidelity Investments' enterprise data systems.
- Completed and delivered a SWOT and competitive analysis.
- Presented recommendations based on the above analyses to the CEO.
Product Manager
Lycos
- Managed all projects for Lycos Communities Services.
- Wrote product requirement documents for the integration of message boards in key content verticals like sports.
- Wrote product requirement document for the creation of stock/investment message boards.
Project History
Founder at PickupZone
PickupZone, an innovative eCommerce service connecting physical and digital commerce to solve the “last mile” delivery; I grew it from a single neighborhood pilot to multi-city rollout with Walgreens and acquisition by ShopRunner
PickupZone enabled consumers to use a local retail store as their shipping destination for their online purchases while enabling retailers to use a mobile application to process inbound and outbound packages. The solution provided consumers with convenience and security for their online purchases while simultaneously providing repeat foot traffic and incremental sales for the retail stores.
Global Click & Collect Platform at eBay
Formulated a frictionless product strategy to build a global Click & Collect service launch of $250 million annualized GMV
Built a strategic product plan for globally scalable, carrier-agnostic Click & Collect service, enabling more than $6 billion in GMV to be eligible for in-store pickup and return across 700 retail stores as well as the API set to enable expansion of the experience in other countries. Designed the end-to-end customer experience on eBay site, mobile app development for in-store team experience for a frictionless, efficient in-store pickup and return process.
Interactive Digital Retail Solutions
Added hardware to software to create interactive solutions to increase customer engagement and incremental revenue.
Leading an Agile team for IoT hardware and software through the design, development, production, and operations of customized interactive digital solutions including interactive signage, endless aisles, virtual try-on, and fitting room smart mirrors with integrated eCommerce, payment, RFID, visual analytics, and augmented reality SDKs
Led product strategy, launch, and growth at Lululemon, Uniqlo, Nordstrom, and Signet Jewelers
Education
MBA in Technology Product Management
Babson College - Wellesley, MA
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Computer Science
University of California, Santa Cruz - Santa Cruz, CA
Certifications
Lean Product Playbook
Lean Product School
Product Management of IoT
Stanford University
Collaborative Design & Strategy
Skills
Tools
Confluence, Jira, Trello, InVision, Adobe InDesign, Google Analytics, Firebase Analytics, BigQuery, Asana, Slack, Adobe Illustrator, OmniGraffle, Visio, VirtualBox, Google Docs, Board Reporting, Claude, DeepSeek, n8n
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, User Testing, Scrum, Kanban, Change Management, Agile, B2C
Industry Expertise
Health & Wellness, Marketplaces
Other
Digital Product Management, Digital Strategy, eCommerce, Technical Product Management, Product Management, Product Roadmaps, Product Strategy, Product Vision, Process Management, Business Strategy, Technology, Business Analysis, Business Process Analysis, Customer Journey, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Product Planning, Product Ownership, Entrepreneurship, Point-of-Sale (POS) Systems, Omnichannel Marketing, Partnerships, Pricing, Startup Funding, Retail & Wholesale, Backlog Management, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Team Management, Team Mentoring, Team Leadership, Team Building, Hiring, Agile Sprints, Email Systems, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Customer Interviews, Waterfall Methodology, Data Flows, Data-driven Decision-making, Decision Analysis, Photoshop CC 2019, Ideation, Validation, ROI, Customer Success, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Go-to-market Plans, IT Project Management, Program Management, Product Development Manager, Director of Product, Head of Product, Digital Kiosks, Business Cases, A/B Testing, Personalization, Portfolio Management, Remote Team Leadership, Stakeholder Management, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Lean Startups, Scrum Product Owner, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Requirements & Specifications, Analytics, AI Product Management, Business to Business (B2B), Digital Transformation, Agile Product Delivery, Lean Canvas, Internet of Things (IoT), B2B, Mobile Apps, Startups, Android, Mobile Web, Mobile Data, Mobile, Windows, User Experience (UX), Two-sided Marketplaces, Customer Experience, Dashboards, Dashboard Development, Technology Trends, C++, Inventory Management, Warehouse Management, React, Technology Consulting, APIs, Android SDK, Platforms, Design Sprints, Digital Payments, Digital Wallets, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Software as a Service (SaaS), RFID, Content Management Systems (CMS), Algorithms, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Hardware, Agency, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Subscriptions, Product Discovery, Sales, Client Services, Data Analysis, Data Analytics, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), AI Agents, Sprint Backlog, Backlog Grooming, Feature Roadmaps, Feature Prioritization, Sprint Planning, Board Presentations, Sales Pitches, Product Sales, Operations, Large Language Models (LLMs), Cursor AI, ChatGPT, Google Gemeni, Meta Llama, Data Scraping, Web Scraping, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG)
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