Matti Kakkori
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Carlsbad, CA, United States
Toptal member since August 12, 2019
Matti is a product management leader with 15+ years in both large organizations and startups. He has managed technology PM teams, re-structured $5+ billion product portfolios, and built and brought to the market several 0-1 products. He has established data and development processes and built and managed teams in product, engineering, design, and data. Matti has worked on products—consumer HW devices, smartphone SW platforms, physical goods and eCommerce, applied AI/ML, SaaS platforms, and GIS.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Digital Product Management
- New Product Development
- Product Strategy
- Prototyping
- SaaS
- Technology Strategy & Architecture
Work Experience
Chief Product and Technology Officer
Rehinged.ai
- Built and led the product, data, and engineering teams to create a simple, elegant modern B2B SaaS application that leverages a custom-built AI NLP platform.
- Scaled the initial product and engineering team of four to 20+ distributed team members across the globe.
- Grew the customer base from paying customers to dozens of successful B2B enterprise customers.
Chief Product Officer
Galaxy & Sons
- Designed and built data-focused web applications leveraging AI and ML.
- Ran a product management consulting practice targeting mobile and web application space.
- Contributed to projects including a smartphone technology roadmap for a world-leading semiconductor company.
- Defined, designed, and managed the development of a cross-platform consumer mobile application for iOS and Android.
- Defined, designed, and managed a mobile insurance software platform development. The platform ran on the web with mobile clients on Android and iOS.
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 municipals customers in tackling 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 Management, Smartphone Experiences
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 SW and HW engineering.
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
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 in 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: AWS, Laravel, Django, Mapbox, ESRI, JIRA, Python, Jupyter, etc.
AI/NLP Web Product for Market Research
http://rehinged.aiLed product design and development for a groundbreaking 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 re-structure 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 restructuring of the business unit.
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.
The mobile application was designed to run on both iOS and Android and was built on Apache Cordova. The backend and the web interface used by customers and the repair was a simple Django/Bootstrap development.
I wireframed the application and UX in detail and led the engineering project with a development company.
Dsider - a 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.
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.
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. ;-) )
Education
Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering
Helsinki University of Technology - Helsinki, Finland
Skills
Tools
Jira, GIS, Confluence, Strategyzer, Slack, Microsoft Power BI
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Data Product Management, Agile Software Development, Requirements Analysis, Scrum, Agile, Agile Project Management, Key Performance Metrics, Design Thinking
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, 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, 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
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