Justus Tölle, Product Manager in Berlin, Germany
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Justus Tölle

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Berlin, Germany

Toptal member since January 29, 2021

Bio

Justus is a product manager who honed his product management skills at a VC-backed startup while growing from 20 to more than 150 people, reaching more than €100 million in valuation with their products. He loves working on ambitious visions with great people.

Expertise

  • Agile
  • Feature Roadmaps
  • Lean Startups
  • New Products & Services
  • Product Management
  • Product Owner
  • Product Roadmaps
  • Product Strategy

Work Experience

Senir Product Manager

2021 - PRESENT
Freelance
  • Launched a platform for professional education courses offered by the chambers of commerce in Germany.
  • Launched a digital dashboard and business process for a real estate brokerage that improved conversion to price reductions 2x, in order to drive transaction volume in a challenging market downturn.
  • Increased the number of suppliers and offers on the client's website by 50%.
  • Established the product management function at a startup from scratch.

Co-founder

2020 - 2021
Stays GmbH
  • Defined the product strategy as the co-founder of the company.
  • Led the customer discovery process and interviewed the target segment to understand product strategy implications.
  • Kickstarted an exploratory fundraising process and handled investor communication (angels, VCs, and accelerators).

Product Manager

2016 - 2019
Wunder Mobility
  • Became the second product manager in the company and helped grow the business from Seed to Series B.
  • Served as the sole product manager accountable for launching a new white-label SaaS product from scratch with a 1+ million EUR budget, eventually leading a team of 15, including engineers, designers, and QA.
  • Built a B2C carpooling marketplace for commuters in some of the world's largest cities.
  • Pioneered Kanban as an alternative to Scrum in the company.
  • Took responsibility for writing user stories, backlog management and prioritization, and product roadmap and strategy.

Project Manager

2014 - 2015
Wunder Mobility
  • Helped the company founder and CEO to close the Series A funding round.
  • Launched two new international markets for the product.
  • Started the first product management practices at the company.

Project History

White Label Ride-hailing Platform

http://wundermobility.com

Brought a new product to market with customers in several countries.

Wunder Mobility is a leader in software for new mobility services such as vehicle sharing and ride-hailing. Wunder Ride is a white-label SaaS solution for B2B clients.

I managed the product discovery and worked closely with technology, and design leads to build this new product from scratch. Leading up to the launch, I was the product manager for two teams with mobile, back-end, and web engineers and design and QA. I helped implement a Kanban process for early development leading to a successful product launch with customers in several countries. I worked closely with sales in early customer conversations. The project was handed off to two product managers at the end of my term.

Professional Education Platform

Launched a platform for professional education courses offered by the chambers of commerce in Germany.

Handled the project management as the main interface to the customer (the umbrella organization of the German Chambers of Commerce) and the product management as the primary interface for the design and development team. Reference: Torsten Hardieß from AI Coaching GmbH.

Go-to-market for a Machine Learning SaaS Product

Led the product strategy and go-to-market for a machine learning API product.

CloudML is a machine-learning API product that allows software teams without ML expertise to add ML-powered features to their products, using image processing or key-value extraction. The product was developed inside an agency, and I was responsible for conducting customer and market research in order to define the strategy to establish the product as a standalone business. In addition, I helped establish contact with seed investors.

Establishment of Product Management Function

https://www.mavue.io/

Established the product management function at a startup after their Pre-seed funding round from scratch.

Consulting the founding team of a B2B SaaS startup in the sustainability management and ESG space on their product management set up after pre-seed funding. Helped to hire the first full-time product manager and trained a junior team member.

New Strategy and Restructuring at Homeday

http://www.homeday.de

Helped to re-align the product organization around the new five-year strategy of the company and launched online booking feature

Homeday is one of the fastest-growing digital real estate brokerage companies in Germany. In 2022, they formulated a five-year strategy, which resulted in the need to re-prioritize all ongoing product initiatives and re-structure the product teams. I was also responsible for launching online viewing appointment bookings to replace manual phone bookings.

Product Strategy for A Medical AI Project

Led the definition of the product strategy given the target group's complex regulatory requirements and needs.

Matchgraft.ai is a project at Europe's largest university hospital that aims to make stem cell transplantation safer by predicting adverse outcomes and improving patient-donor matching. I was responsible for defining the product strategy and building and testing prototypes.

Driving Price Reductions at Homeday (Second Project)

http://www.homeday.de

Launched a digital dashboard and business process for a real estate brokerage that improved conversion to price reductions 2x, driving transaction volume in a challenging market downturn.

Returned to Homeday for a second project. Launched a new dashboard showing marketing and viewing statistics for home sellers, complementary business processes, and internal tools for operational teams. The goal was to convince sellers to reduce their prices, given weaker demand in the market.

Education

2015 - 2016

Master's Degree in Business Administration

ESADE Business & Law School - Barcelona, Spain

2014 - 2014

Bachelor's Degree in International Business

Singapore Management University - Singapore, Singapore

2011 - 2014

Coursework Towards a Bachelor's Degree in International Business

Maastricht University - Maastricht, Netherlands

Skills

Tools

Jira, Figma, Confluence

Paradigms

Agile, Agile Product Management, Key Performance Metrics, Scrum, Kanban, Requirements Analysis, Agile Project Management

Industry Expertise

Marketplaces

Other

Product Roadmaps, Product Strategy, Lean Startups, Product Management, User Stories, Feature Roadmaps, Mobility, Sprint Planning, Product Ownership, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Metrics, Backlog Management, Product Delivery, Mobility as a Service (MaaS), IT Product Management, Business Strategy, B2B Product Management, Story Mapping, Product Owner, Strategy, Business to Business (B2B), Business to Consumer (B2C), Product Launch, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), New Product Development, New Products & Services, Implementation, Product Leadership, Go-to-market Strategy, Product Development, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Mobile Apps, Agile Delivery, Two-sided Marketplaces, Software as a Service (SaaS), Business, Miro, Discovery, Fundraising, Project Management, Market Research, Business Analysis, APIs, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Customer Discovery, Pitch Decks, Seed Fundraising, SaaS, IT Management, IT Project Management, Notion, Roadmaps, Feature Prioritization, Restructuring, Process Flows

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