
Matti Kakkori
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Carlsbad, CA, United States
Toptal member since August 12, 2019
Matti is a strategic product and technology executive with 15+ years of driving AI innovation (Agentic AI, LLMs, RAG, Vector Search) and personalization in enterprise B2B products. He excels at scaling AI-powered platforms from concept to market success, leading cross-functional teams (engineering, data science, design) in startups and large organizations. Matti has a proven track record, including achieving a $75+ million acquisition and advising Fortune 100 companies on AI strategy.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Digital Product Management
- Digital Transformation
- New Product Development
- Product Strategy
- SaaS
- Technology Strategy & Architecture
Work Experience
Chief Product Officer
Galaxy & Sons
- Advised Fortune 100 companies and diverse startups on AI product strategy and digital transformation, focusing on zero-to-one innovation.
- Architected an agentic healthcare AI MVP, converting video to semantic data and utilizing LLM rankings to drive successful pilot programs.
- Developed an emotionally intelligent, persuasive chatbot, architecting systems to leverage structured data as dynamic context.
- Led early prototyping of a generative AI product using GPT-3.5 and vector databases, influencing a key company strategy pivot.
- Guided diverse projects leveraging multilingual GenAI voice/speech systems, contributing to the securement of multimillion-dollar grants.
Head of AI Product
Agilitas AI
- Spearheaded the development and launch of an agentic AI platform integrating LLMs and RAG, significantly enhancing semantic search capabilities.
- Accelerated critical R&D workflows for enterprise users by 50x through the implementation of the new AI-powered platform.
- Directed a cross-functional team of engineers and data scientists to build enterprise-grade AI solutions, aligning rapid prototyping with a long-term strategic roadmap.
- Architected a proprietary "data moat" and robust evaluation frameworks, establishing a data-centric approach that strengthened the platform's competitive advantage.
- Drove the strategic integration of AI capabilities into product UX/design and core business strategy, ensuring technical execution aligned directly with market needs.
Chief Product and Technology Officer
Rehinged.ai
- Scaled product and engineering teams from 4 to 20+ professionals, providing leadership through a critical period of rapid company growth.
- Architected the core Carenet.AI healthcare data platform, which became the primary driver, generating 80% of total company revenue.
- Launched a new AI/NLP-powered platform, successfully scaling it to acquire 40+ enterprise customers and exceed $1 million ARR within 18 months.
- Established key product metrics and KPIs directly linked to business outcomes, fostering a culture of data-informed decision-making across teams.
- Implemented a highly effective technical sales methodology that achieved a 90% close rate for enterprise customer deals.
- Built and deployed a scalable data infrastructure supporting complex analytics requirements essential for the healthcare data platform.
VP Product
Fracta.ai
- Defined the product strategy and developed a web application prototype that was used to correct assumptions and gather feedback from lead customers.
- Drove the development of SaaS SW platform that wraps a complicated AI/ML algorithm utilizing geospatial GIS data into an easy-to-use SW product that meets the needs of municipal customers in tackling the renewal of aging water infrastructure.
- Led a team of data engineers and built Fracta’s data pipeline and process to guide customers from messy data to refined ML-driven results.
- Defined and executed a structured agile product and SW development process for the company. Helped evolve the product from Prototype to V4 and grow the customer base from zero to 40+ municipalities.
Product Manager
Nokia USA
- Led the Nokia smartphone experience definition for Nokia Verizon products with a long-term vision of sensor and AI-driven complete product experience.
- Collaborated across all functions of Nokia North America from the leadership team to software and hardware engineering.
- Synthesized information from consumer, technology, market research, and trends to create a long-term product vision.
Product Portfolio Strategy and Product Range Management
Nokia Denmark
- Defined portfolio strategy and product lines for Nokia Live Business Unit with $5+ billion annual sales.
- Led product strategy to restructure part of Nokia’s sprawling product portfolio, with many hard decisions.
- Guided the PM function as a product range manager, coordinating activities across sales, marketing, design, R&D and PM in Nokia’s large matrix organization to maintain a coherent product line.
Senior Manager, Business Strategy
Nokia USA
- Developed a classic business strategy for the Nokia CDMA Business unit - analyzing available markets, M&A, and partnerships.
Technology Product Management
Nokia USA
- Led the tech marketing team to define technology roadmaps for Nokia CDMA products. Technologies covered from RF/Bluetooth to DRM and multimedia.
- Worked closely with engineering and SW platforms to build products that meet customer.
Various Engineering Roles
Nokia Finland/UK
- Worked at various roles in different mobile phone and software business units.
- Developed game engine software that shipped in 100+ million devices.
- Wrote and held mobile internet technology training and workshops across the globe, e.g. consulting swiss banks on mobile internet security.
Project History
Agentic AI Platform for R&D Acceleration
http://getagilitas.comSpearheaded the development and launch of an agentic AI platform integrating LLMs and RAG, accelerating critical enterprise R&D workflows by 50x.
Core Healthcare Data & AI/NLP Platform
https://www.rehinged.ai/Architected and launched the core Carenet.AI healthcare data platform, incorporating AI/NLP, driving 80% of the company's revenue, and scaling to 40+ customers and $1 million ARR.
Agentic Healthcare AI MVP for Semantic Video Search
Architected and delivered an agentic healthcare AI MVP featuring a transcription pipeline and LLM rankings to enable semantic video content search.
AI/ML SaaS for Water Utilities
Led product strategy, design, and development. Built the product from prototype to v4 and 40+ B2B customers.
• Developing a well-researched customer-needs-driven product strategy.
• Coding a quick and dirty mockup to test assumptions with lead customers.
• Specifying and leading the development of an MVP version of the software.
• Creating product marketing materials and launching the product at a large industry trade show.
• Leading the technical sales for the product.
• Running engineering and building a structured agile development process for further improvements.
• Through multiple architecture and technology improvements, reaching v4 of the software and 40+ B2B customers.
Some basic technologies used in the project are AWS, Laravel, Django, Mapbox, ESRI, JIRA, Python, and Jupyter.
AI/NLP Web Product for Market Research
http://rehinged.aiLed product design and development for a ground-breaking AI/NLP-driven market research platform.
The software product is delivered as a SaaS product.
Product Portfolio Strategy for $5+ Billion Revenue Business
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XpressMusicDeveloped a product portfolio strategy to simplify an overgrown but very successful consumer electronics product range.
I created a thorough market and consumer needs-driven analysis on how to restructure the product portfolio to be more balanced and more accurately capture the market volume and demand.
The strategy was adopted and implemented as part of a larger business unit restructuring.
Emotionally Intelligent Persuasive Chatbot
Developed an emotionally intelligent, persuasive chatbot tailored for the Japanese market, architecting its system to leverage structured data for dynamic context.
Foldpass – A Creative Collaboration Game on iOS
Designed and ran the development for a simple turn-based creative game with a design twist.
The result can then be made into a well-designed poster through an embedded poster editor with downloadable poster packs.
I led the design, development, and launch of the application.
The architecture was a Phonegap-based iOS application connecting to a Django back end.
MobileCrax – Insurance Application
https://appadvice.com/game/app/mobile-crax/1221835534Designed and ran the engineering for the web application and multi-platform iOS/Android mobile app development.
Dsider – Decision-making Platform
https://web.archive.org/web/20130531131837/http://dsider.com/Designed and built a social decision-making platform running in iOS.
I ran the UX and product development for the application and managed the off-shored development of the back-end server and the mobile application.
Building an Agile Development Process from Scratch
I defined and ran an agile development process for a startup growing from 2 engineers to 10+.
I established an agile development process when the team started growing. The development team adopted the system of 2-week sprints with well defined epics, user stories and tasks in JIRA.
The implementation of the agile process sped up the development of new features and products. (Of course, hring a larger team didn't hurt either. ;-) )
Long-term Smartphone Experience Planning
Led a team planning a comprehensive long term smartphone experience for the US market.
The project team was huge with participants ranging from executive office to sales and marketing to HW engineering.
The project considered various inputs from consumer and technology trends to competitive M&A transactions and developed HW and SW prototypes and mockups.
Education
Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering
Helsinki University of Technology - Helsinki, Finland
Skills
Tools
Jira, GIS, Confluence, Strategyzer, Slack, Microsoft Power BI, n8n
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Data Product Management, Agile Software Development, Requirements Analysis, Scrum, Agile, Agile Project Management, Key Performance Metrics, Design Thinking, Rapid Prototyping, API Architecture
Industry Expertise
Telecommunications, New Business Ventures, Health & Wellness, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals
Platforms
Jupyter Notebook
Other
New Product Development, Product Strategy, Product Owner, Product Management, Remote Work, Technology Strategy & Architecture, Leadership, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS), Business Analysis, Data, Strategy, Product Development, Digital Product Development, Technical Consulting, Workshops, Technical Requirements, System Requirements, Proof of Concept (POC), Artificial Intelligence Product Manager, Pitch Presentations, B2B Lead Generation, B2B Sales Pipeline, B2B Product Management, Lead Generation, Team Leadership, Roadmaps, Technical Product Management, Stakeholder Management, Feature Prioritization, Product Roadmaps, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Analytical Thinking, Data Product Manager, User Journeys, Computer Science, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Director of Product, MVP Design, Business, Product Strategy Consultant, Lean Startups, Product Planning, Planning, Product Ownership, User Stories, New Products, International Growth, Data-driven Decision-making, Feature Planning, Remote Team Leadership, Data Science Product Manager, Consulting, Lead Management, Build/Buy Analysis, Product Consultant, Apps, Startup Consulting, New Business Development, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), AI Consulting, Conceptual Design, Startups, Project Portfolio Management (PPM), Data Analysis, Machine Learning, SaaS, Design Management, Technology Trends, Digital Product Management, Prototyping, UX Design, Product Design, Data Science, Python, Data Visualization, Data Engineering, Data Strategy, Digital Transformation, CTO, User Experience (UX), Marketing, Solution Architecture, APIs, B2B Partnerships, User Personas, SWOT Analysis, Market Fit, B2B, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, White Labeling, Algorithms, Market Research, Conceptualization, Ideation, Project Scoping, Scope, Specs, Engineering, Software as a Service (SaaS), Business to Business (B2B), Product Frameworks, Customer Insights, Corporate Strategy, Databases, Database-driven Web App Development, Web & Mobile Applications, Medical Software, User Research, Product Vision, Web Applications, Dashboards, Functional Requirements, Go-to-market Strategy, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Integration, Stacks, Backlog Management, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Product Growth, Business Models, Revenue Strategy, Business Development, Pricing, Business Administration, Go-to-market Plans, Market Research & Analysis, Product Marketing, Project Management, Mockups, Sprint Planning, Business Intelligence (BI), Applications, Product Engineering, Product Discovery, Wireframing, Coaching, Team Mentoring, Web App Development, Feature Roadmaps, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Quantitative Analysis, Qualitative Research, Templates, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Agile Leadership, Best Practices, Pricing Strategy, Product Customization, User Needs, Markets, Feature Analysis, Audience Targeting, User Flows, Healthcare IT, Iteration Management, Growth Strategy, Growth Hacking, Service Design, Operational Workflow, Chatbots, Entrepreneurship, Pitch Decks, Feasibility Studies, Data Management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Email Marketing Automation, Automation, Platform Design, User Onboarding, SaaS Product Management, User Experience Design, Branding, Mobile Apps, Project Planning, Competition Research, Business to Consumer (B2C), Business Consulting, Networking, Market Research Analyst, New Product Business Cases, R&D, Low-code Development, No-code Development, Workflow Automation, Data Products, Program Management, Agile Program Management, Data Collection, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Data Analytics, Data Reporting, Engineering Management, Online Payments, Fintech, Digital Payments, User Interface (UI), Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Wix, QA Testing, Product Launch, Launch Strategy, Discovery Workshops, Data Modeling, Design Systems, Pricing Models, Revenue Modeling, Monetization Models, Sales, Software Architecture, AWS Cloud Architecture, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Budgeting, Mobile Applications, Medical Equipment, Healthcare Services, Opportunity Assessments, Consumer Technology, Marketing Automation, AI Agents, Agentic Frameworks, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Customer Research, Technical Hiring, Technical Research, Sales Engineering, Enterprise SaaS, Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), Foodtech, Large Language Models (LLMs), Large Language Model Operations (LLMOps), Vector Databases, Platforms, UX Strategy, Company Strategy, Competitive Strategy, Presentation Design, Board Presentations, Client Presentations, Presentations, Sales Presentations, Digital Transformation Program Management, Big Data, Fine-tuning, Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), Cross-functional Team Leadership, Cross-functional Engagement, Business Intelligence (BI) Platforms, Data Transcription, Amazon EC2, AI Chatbots, Chatbot Conversation Design, Storage, Data Architecture, Data Pipelines, Cloud Infrastructure, SaaS Strategy, Team Management, Offshore Team Management, Offshoring, Healthtech, Digital Health, Healthcare Sales, Healthcare Software
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