Javier Rincon
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
For 15+ years, Javier's helped startups and corporates to build and launch successful products that customers love with his lean, product, and growth expertise. He's worked with VC-backed startups such as Wunderlist (acquired by Microsoft), Open Me (acquired by Threadless), Moviepilot (acquired by Webedia), and Pluto TV (acquired by Viacom). He also led the company builder for Kraft Heinz. Javier is a top mentor for Techstars and Founder Institute, helping 100+ startups launch sticky products.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Startup Mentor | Coach
Techstars
- Worked with 100+ startups at Founder Institute (global accelerator) to define their business model and go-to-market, interview and survey customers, define product strategy and roadmap, and launch product MVPs to validate market assumptions.
- Worked with 15+ high-growth startups at Techstars Berlin (an $18.2 billion accelerator) to built their value proposition, identify assumptions and risks, do market research, define product strategy, and build web/mobile MVPs in multiple industries.
- Mentored Flowr at the Imagine2030 (a sustainable mobility incubator by the German Government) building an energy storage system to charge EV fleets in cities, and having financial transactions by reselling energy back into the grid.
- Worked with Beelinguapp (an education mobile app with 3 million users) on carrying out customer research, identifying opportunities, building an opportunity roadmap, and launching A/B tests to increase onboarding, retention, and revenue metrics.
Head of CRM Digital Ventures
The Kraft Heinz Company
- Led a 15-member team of cross-functional builders to build three disruptive startups by building MVPs.
- Designed the innovation and discovery process for the CRM department to identify 200+ ideas and validate 30+ ideas in a few months.
- Interviewed 100+ people and built 30+ landing pages to discover customer problems and validate potential solutions.
- Reported to the chief growth officer (CGO) and VP of digital transformation.
Interim VP Product
Fintech Co.
- Defined the product vision, strategy, go-to-market, customer journey, and customer pain points. Launched 15+ discovery and design sprints to interview customers, build mobile prototypes, launch MVPs, and validate assumptions with thousands of users.
- Managed the delivery team of 10+ people with Agile and Scrum to deliver a fully working, compliant mobile investing app. Defined the product roadmap, sliced product releases, managed the product backlog, and led scrum sprints.
- Led the design and marketing team to deliver marketing assets like a product video, landing page, and community that helped create a waitlist of 40,000+ users.
Lean Product Manager | Innovation Consultant
LEANCrush (Self-employed)
- Launched several discovery-and-design sprints (build of the MVP) to validate market/product assumptions, MVP, and version 1 of their product for Hulecos SA (a deep-tech and mobile app stealth company).
- Worked for Offerista GmbH (the largest DACH consumer network with a 39.5 million reach) and trained senior management in lean, created a new business department, launched discovery-and-design sprints for a product for Kaufland (food retail company).
- Launched a new healthcare product in Germany for Menavitin GmbH (a spin-off from Pelion the largest Polish healthcare operator with a $2 billion revenue) by executing discovery and design sprints; directly reported to the CEO and board of directors.
Co-founder | CEO | CPO
Proudsugar
- Managed and led growth, product, and analytics teams for more than 15 projects that resulted in increased revenues for eCommerce, SaaS, app, and lead generation with conversion rate optimization, lean and agile methodologies.
- Led a team of six, implemented web analytics, interviewed/surveyed customers, identified opportunities, redesigned the UX, and launched A/B tests for MROSupply (eCommerce with 1 million SKUs for mechanical parts) resulting in $5 million/year sales.
- Led a team of seven, added analytics, launched surveys, optimized customer journey, built a testing roadmap, redesigned UX, and launched A/B tests for Openme.com (an eCommerce startup that was sold to Rowl), resulting in over 33% in sales in <3 months.
- Led a team of nine, added analytics, surveyed and interviewed, redesigned UX, road mapped, and launched A/B tests for Plug.dj (a web/mobile music startup with 7 million users), resulting in higher retention of 120,000+ new users/year in <3 months.
- Worked with a team of 15, added analytics, did user research, built an opportunity roadmap, and launched A/B tests for Moviepilot (a movie content platform that sold to Webedia), resulting in higher onboarding for 520,000+ users/year in <4 months.
- Worked with a team of seven, implemented web analytics and created dashboard reports for Pluto.tv (an internet TV startup that sold to Viacom for $300 million). This led to identifying product conversion problems, UX redesigns and better KPIs.
- Led a team of five for Discuto.io (a B2B SaaS ideation and collaboration platform with 20,000+ users), implemented analytics, performed user surveys/interviews, launched a UX redesign, resulting in higher onboarding of 35%, as well as 2x retention.
- Led a team of four for Explorable (an educational platform with 4 million visitors/month), implemented web analytics, did user surveys/interviews, launched a roadmap of A/B experiments, and built an MVP. Increased engagement by 30% and sales by 25%.
CMO
Wunderlist
- Worked for Wunderlist: the best to-do list app in the world, with over +10 million users that sold to Microsoft for +$100 million.
- Led the marketing and design team of seven people from 2 million to 4 million app downloads.
- Delivered a pre-launch event for Wunderkit campaign that attracted over 500,000 users.
- Led the creation of Wunderkit's new website from ideation to pre-launch.
Co-founder | CEO | CPO
Lowffer
- Worked for Lowffer: a mobile recommendation app that allowed users to discover the best geo-located offers.
- Led a team of six people from definition to launch and improvement; it had about over 40,000 users.
- Executed the pre-launch campaign over magazines, radio, conferences, and online that attracted over 3,000 users.
- Defined and built the web and mobile app with a team of four designers and developers from mockups to deployment.
Startup Advisor | Investment Deal Flow Manager
Keiretsu Forum
- Worked for La Salle Innovation Park (startup incubator), supporting ten product launches alongside 50+ world-class mentors. I also helped manage the Keiretsu Business Angel Forum, a community of accredited Angels and VCs in 53 global chapters.
- Built a startup deal flow network for investors across Spain, then screened and valued 100 companies—raising €200,000-€2million. Created a network of dozens of investors across Spain to present startup fundraising deals.
- Mentored ten technology startups and helped them build a product, execute go-to-market strategies, and fundraise.
Associate Consultant for Business Intelligence
Oracle
- Worked for Oracle, a multinational computer technology corporation with 177.13 billion in market capitalization.
- Participated in building two business intelligence projects for EMEA management.
- Collaborated in building BI dashboards for Dutch management.
- Provided a training workshop on the Oracle BI platform.
Project History
Kraft Heinz CRM Digital Ventures
https://www.kraftheinzcompany.com/Led CRM Digital Ventures team of 15 people to identify 200+ potential ideas, validate 30 and build three startups to disrupt the food industry.
I joined the project as a business lead to build a startup in the Convenience vertical. I was promoted to lead the whole CRM department, comprising 15 people. I designed and managed the innovation process to interview +100 people, survey +5000, ideate +200 potential ideas, and build 30 landing pages and three MVPs.
Q.ai Invest
http://www.tryq.aiLed the discovery, design, and development of the alpha and beta release for a new AI-powered investing app to a +40,000 user waitlist.
• Launched over ten discovery and design sprints to build several mobile prototypes, launched MVP, and then validated market/product assumptions with thousands of users.
• Managed the delivery team of over ten people with Agile and Scrum to deliver a fully working, compliant mobile investing app.
Plug.dj
Implemented analytics, carried out surveys to thousands of users, created a roadmap, and launched A/B experiments, which increased retention, revenue, and onboarding by 120,000 new users/year on a 7 million user base.
OpenMe
https://www.openme.com/Implemented analytics, optimized the customer journey, and launched multiple A/B experiments to redesign the website—which increased the sales funnel by 33%.
Moviepilot
https://www.moviepilot.de/Implemented analytics with millions of data events, carried out user tests, created a roadmap of experiments, and launched A/B experiments, which increased signups by 520,000 new users/year.
MROSupply
https://www.mrosupply.com/Implemented analytics, analyzed customer feedback, and launched A/B experiments, which increased sales to over $5 million per year.
Discuto
https://www.discuto.io/Redesigned UX for whole product, homepage and landing pages resulting in a 35% increase in onboarding and doubling retention.
It resulted in increased onboarding of 35%, as well as doubling retention.
Explorable
https://explorable.com/Led a team of four for Explorable (an educational platform with 4 million visitors/month), implemented web analytics, did user surveys/interviews, launched a roadmap of A/B experiments, and built an MVP. Increased engagement by 30% and sales by 25%.
Krautreporter
https://krautreporter.de/mitglied-werdenLed the web analytics and customer discovery implementation that led to the redesign of the website and increase in engagement and revenues.
Healthcare Startups for Pelion Healthcare
https://www.menavitin.de/Launched a new healthcare product as a spin-off, Menavitin GmbH, by executing discovery and design sprints. Directly reported to the CEO and board of directors.
Menavitin was launched as a way to revolutionize how young people access, manage, and intake nutrients through the molecule 1-MNA.
By launching Lean Sprints, the demand was validated, the customer segment was identified, and further product iterations were developed.
Education
Master's Degree in Systems Engineering, Marketing, and Management
Loughborough University - Loughborough, England
Bachelor's Degree in Systems Engineering
Loughborough University - Loughborough, England
Summer Thesis in Organizational Learning
Hong Kong University - Hong Kong, China
Skills
Tools
Slack, Trello, Google Analytics, Strategyzer, Roadmunk, Zoom, Jira, Figma, Mailchimp
Platforms
Mixpanel, KISSmetrics, Blockchain, Blockchain Platforms, ProductPlan
Paradigms
Quantitative Research, B2C, Kanban, Agile, Agile Product Management, Design Thinking, Iterative Development, Agile Project Management, Scrum
Industry Expertise
Startup Accelerators, Entertainment & Leisure, High-tech Startups, Healthcare, Venture Capital, Education Technology (Edtech), Banking & Finance
Other
Business Modeling, Value Proposition Design, Product Vision, Market Segmentation, Business Model Canvas, Product Ownership, Product Management, Product Research, Story Mapping, Startups, Early-stage Startups, Jobs to be Done (JTBD), Product-market Fit, Qualitative Research, Market Research, Web Analytics, Customer Journeys, A/B Testing, Assumptions Mapping, Financial Modeling, Product Roadmaps, Continuous Integration (CI), Customer Research, Lean Product Management, Value Proposition, Business Models, Product Discovery, Product Strategy, Lean UX, Lean Startups, Mobile Apps, Usability, UX Flows, Product Owner, Systems Analysis, Analytics, Business Analysis, Product Design, User Experience (UX), App UX, UX Design, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Product Benchmarking, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Customer Discovery, Validation, Research Analysis, User Research, UX Research, Customer Development, Customer Analysis, Consumer Behavior, Direct to Consumer (D2C), UI Research, Innovation Strategy, Design Strategy, Ideation Workshops, Innovation, Strategic Design, UX Workshops, Workshops, Innovation Labs, VentureBuilder, Workshop Facilitation, Business Requirements, Functional Requirements, Scope of Work, UX Wireflows, Market Strategy and Research Product Manager, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Go-to-market Strategy, Mobile Applications, MVP Design, App Development, Product Conceptualization, Product Launch, Resource Management, Roadmaps, User Stories, Wireframe to Product, Product Consultant, Feature Roadmaps, Financials, Backlog Management, Mobile App Development, Product Delivery, Product Growth, Project Timelines, Revenue Strategy, Scope, Startup Consulting, User Requirements, Training, Coaching, Experimental Design, Mentorship & Coaching, Training & Training Content Development, Innovation Workshops, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Google Sheets, Scrum Master, Agile Coaching, SaaS, Data Analytics, Data Analysis, User Interface (UI), UI Design, Go-to-market Plans, Monetization, iOS, Android, APIs, User Interviews, Surveys, Mobile Prototypes, Angel Investing, eCommerce, Learning, Organizational Design, Communication Strategy, Fintech, Finance, Stock Market, Fintech Consultant, Amplitude, Excel 365, Microsoft PowerPoint, Intercom, Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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