Hugo Romano
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Copenhagen, Denmark
Toptal member since November 20, 2020
Over the past decade, Hugo has been building startups as a product manager and founder in Silicon Valley. He's been the first PM hired at two startups, led products at two "unicorns," and built products with +100m MAUs. Products Hugo has managed have been acquired, IPO'd, or raised $347m in VC funding.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- A/B Testing
- Agile Product Management
- Business Analysis
- Data Analysis
- Product Frameworks
- Product Management
- Startups
- User Research
Work Experience
Founder and CEO
Colors.app
- Hired and managed a team of five engineers to build a mobile MVP, admin portal, and web extension.
- Designed, launched, coded (React Native), ran user research, and iterated on the product with +200 users.
- Pitched to over 30 VCs for seed funding and received a $100k commitment.
- Reduced customer acquisition costs by 25% by running marketing and activation experiments.
Staff Product Manager (FTE)
Asana
- Led product areas with the most urgent user pains, collaborated with executives on product strategy, improved Asana's product development process, and mentored PMs as one of the most senior PMs leading up to Asana's IPO.
- Addressed Asana's top user complaints by leading a team of over a dozen world-class engineers, designers, researchers, marketers, and data scientists to co-create and launch redesigns to Notifications and Inbox.
- Led the quarterly OKR setting process to define a team strategy, prioritize initiatives, and align with company objectives. Regularly presented progress and new initiatives to the company (+500 people) and executives.
- Oversaw user and market research and partnered with executives to define a product strategy for messaging.
Senior Product Manager (FTE)
Mozilla
- Joined Mozilla through Pocket's acquisition. As the most senior PM at Pocket after Mozilla's acquisition, I helped grow the PM organization and ensured post-acquisition success by integrating Pocket into Firefox.
- Championed an agile, collaborative development process by adopting Lean principles, the Double-Diamond model, and the Job Story model to unpack problems, co-create solutions and build consensus.
- Optimized conversion from Firefox to Pocket by running dozens of A/B tests in areas with 1m DAUs.
- Diversified Mozilla's revenue by launching Firefox New Tab Stories with +100m MAUs.
- Improved reader engagement in Pocket by two times by launching Pocket Listen. Regularly presented OKR progress and new initiatives to the company (1,100 people) and executives.
First Product Manager (FTE)
- Led growth, collaborated with executives to scale the product org, ran quantitative and qualitative studies to uncover opportunities and define strategy, mentored PMs, and helped hire other PMs and engineers as the first PM.
- Improved user acquisition by eight times by running dozens of A/B tests, including account trial functionality and contextual onboarding, using a data-informed agile process to uncover needs and guide product iterations.
- Reactivated millions of churned users and drastically lifted MAUs by launching Chrome New Tab Stories.
- Unlocked a new user audience by launching Pocket's first separate stand-alone product, Pocket Discover.
First Product Manager (FTE)
Dialpad
- Led product development as the first PM end-to-end during the early stages, collaborated with executives to mature the product organization, hire PMs, pitched executives on new projects, and hosted weekly all-hands (+100 ppl).
- Established a shared vision and priorities with an experienced team of over 15 ex-Google engineers to ship hundreds of features that helped establish Dialpad as an industry leader and eventually become a "unicorn."
- Built product integrations that helped skyrocket the company's growth early on. These enabled new ways of using the product, such as Google Hangouts, Salesforce, HipChat, and many others.
- Implemented and managed Dialpad's agile software development processes for engineering teams throughout the organization. Led the company's first QA team, managed a weekly release cadence, and became a reference Jira user.
Junior Technical Product Manager (PTE)
Fidelity Investments
- Assisted in developing and managing an IaaS cloud IT infrastructure product for high-availability financial applications with an Agile software development team.
- Led the creation of Fidelity's Hackathon program, bringing dozens of employees together from across the organization and resulting in new initiatives. The Fidelity Hackathon became an ongoing corporate innovation program.
- Ran Agile ceremonies with a team of over eight engineers and cross-functional partners.
Project History
Firefox New Tab Page Recommendations
https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/pocket-in-firefox/Led the development of content recommendations on Firefox's New Tab Page. This launched Mozilla into the content recommendation space by using data from Pocket's saved content (Mozilla acquired Pocket) to identify trending articles.
We initially A/B tested and rolled-out the functionality in Pocket's Chrome extension. Given its vast success and Mozilla's acquisition of Pocket, we later implemented it on Firefox's default new tab page. This product has hundreds of millions of MAUs.
Asana Inbox Redesign
Led a major redesign to Asana's inbox product to help users manage project activity notifications. The redesign consisted of adding quick filters catered to different user types and workflows and improving the visual information hierarchy.
By adding quick filters to the inbox, such as "Assigned to me," "@Mentioned," and "Assigned by me," users could easily find notifications and activities they most need to be effective. We also updated the inbox's visual design to improve the information hierarchy.
The redesign tested exceptionally well, and we rolled it out to positive quantitative and qualitative signals.
Dialpad/UberConference Relaunch and Screen Sharing
Led the development of a relaunch to Dialpad's conferencing product (UberConference), including PIN-less conferencing, screen sharing, and a design overhaul. This push helped propel Dialpad from a startup to an industry leader and innovator.
As UberConference's first project manager, I led a company-wide effort to completely redesign UberConference to address major user pains and implement solutions that were unheard of in the space, such as PIN-less and no-install-required conferencing software.
The company-wide effort set UberConference as the first "easy conferencing solution" in the market, stimulating the market with a wave of new streamlined solutions like Zoom and GoToMeeting.
Pocket Listen
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/11/17961564/pocket-redesign-listening-amazon-pollyLed the development of major new mobile functionality that enables users to listen to articles they've saved to Pocket. The product turns article text into a podcast-like playlist, so users can read more of what they save via natural text-to-speech.
To implement Pocket Listen, I led a partnership with Mozilla's Emerging Technology team (Mozilla/Firefox acquired Pocket) to develop a text-to-speech service and a unique new listening interface that uses Amazon Polly (TTS engine) to parse and synthesize articles into natural speech.
The release was successful and resulted in meaningful adoption and positive press and qualitative feedback.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration, Management Information Systems, Technological Entrepreneurship
Northeastern University - Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Skills
Tools
Asana, Figma, Jira, Sketch, Google Analytics
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Agile Software Development, Agile Workflow, Agile, Agile Project Management, Requirements Analysis, Key Performance Metrics, Kanban, B2C, Iterative Design, Scrum, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), User Testing
Industry Expertise
Premium Content Subscriptions, Financial Services
Platforms
Twilio
Other
Product Management, Business Administration, User Research, Product Analytics, A/B Testing, Product Growth, Mobile App Development, Web App Development, Startups, Stakeholder Management, Team Leadership, Risk Management, Project Management, Software as a Service (SaaS), Business to Consumer (B2C), Business to Business (B2B), Business Analysis, Feature Prioritization, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Product Frameworks, Product Ownership, Product Discovery, Agile Product Delivery, Discovery Workshops, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Technical Product Management, Project Reporting, Mobile Apps, Subscriptions, Product Owner, Process Flows, Business Process Analysis, Technology Trends, Program Management, Business Requirements, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Project Planning, User Stories, Job Stories, Mobile Product Management, Web Product Management, Software Development, User Experience (UX), Wireframing, Workflow, Business Intelligence (BI), Dashboard Design, Data Analytics, Strategy, Apps, User Onboarding, Onboarding, Market Segmentation, Web Applications, SaaS, Roadmaps, Feasibility Studies, Market Opportunity Analysis, Telemetry, Feature Planning, Market Research & Analysis, Market Fit, B2B Product Management, Enterprise SaaS, Team Management, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Requirements, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Market Research, Funnel Analysis, Tracking, Website Traffic, Freemium Model, User Engagement, Data-driven Dashboards, Feature Analysis, Collaboration Tools, Product Leadership, Product Launch, Technical Requirements, Audience Targeting, Mobile, Digital Product Management, Technical Project Management, User Requirements, Project Timelines, User Needs, Product Customization, Data-driven Decision-making, Iteration Management, Analytical Thinking, User Flows, MVP Design, Websites, Scope Management, Team Mentoring, Amplitude, Mode Analytics, Entrepreneurship, Web Development, Data Analysis, Product Design, Integration, Coaching, Business Planning, Business Models, Go-to-market Plans, Marketing Strategy, Partnership Strategies, Audio, Growth, Marketing, Growth Marketing, Monetization, Data Visualization, Business Strategy, Vendor Selection, Contact Centers, Call Centers, Workshops, Market Strategy and Research Product Manager, Monetization Models, Collaborative Design, Website Audits, Social Media, Consulting, B2B, Product Positioning, Pricing Strategy, Pricing Models, Machine Learning, APIs, Algorithms, Social Networks, Product Coach, Product Marketing, Partnerships, Amazon Web Services (AWS), WebRTC, Cloud Infrastructure, IT Infrastructure, Management, Business Development, New Business Development, Fintech, SMS, SaaS Product Marketing, Growth Marketing Product Manager, Tech Sales, Sales Enablement, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Lean Experiments, Lean Product Manager, UX Design, User Retention, Remote User Testing, User Validation Testing, Software Engineering, Advertising, Advertising Design, Internet Marketing, Brand Positioning, Privacy Frameworks, Video Streaming, Artificial Intelligence (AI), CEO, Product-market Fit, Fundraising, Seed Fundraising, Hiring, Technical Hiring, React Native, iOS, Mobile Advertising, Conflict Resolution
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