Michael Melichar, Product Manager in New York, NY, United States
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Michael Melichar

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

New York, NY, United States

Toptal member since March 17, 2020

Bio

Michael is a tenured global product leader with extensive experience energizing winning consumer and enterprise software in startup and corporate environments. His notable clients include Indeed, Yahoo, AOL, and Experian, Inc. He's built and led product teams and managed delivery, technical requirements, and strategic planning. Michael delivers record-leading programs, interfacing with internal and global stakeholders to ship quality, on-time, and in-budget products to drive businesses forward.

Project Highlights

Creativebug Product Owner
As product director, I led the Creativebug site and apps through an end-to-end redesign, driving the product and development team through a 10x subscription growth in 18 months.
Western Union Kiosk Redesign
As product owner, I led the initiatives for Western Union's kiosk refresh and full end-to-end redesign, optimizing the user flow and front end to lift overall transactions by 10%.

Expertise

  • Agile Product Management
  • B2B
  • B2C
  • Mobile App Development
  • Mobile Apps
  • Product Owner
  • Project Tracking
  • Team Leadership

Work Experience

Product Consultant

2017 - PRESENT
Self-employed
  • Acted as the program owner and scrum master for all phases of the client lifecycle for 3Advance, an award-winning mobile app development agency.
  • Managed scoping, documentation, client stakeholder relationships, and product delivery for iOS, Android, and admin techs.
  • Led the development of a headless app and supporting AI technology. Acted as a delivery manager for the 2020/2021 front-end redesign and feature development.
  • Oversaw the development of Q2E, an early-stage Silicon Valley startup process automation product.
  • Led the feature definition and rollout for Western Union's kiosk applications. Lifted engagement and conversion metrics by 15% and overall transfers by 10%. Conducted end-to-end redesign and replatformed projects.
  • Spearheaded marketing and product delivery for a bootstrapped, early-stage startup, including feature definition, customer insight research, beta prototyping, and release of the initial product introduction for Axum Graphics.
  • Acted as a product leader, operations manager, and business strategist for an early-stage startup backed by Expa Labs. Led customer research, optimization, feature definition, strategy roadmap, and strategic planning for the Ninayo.com business.
  • Worked as the program lead for Indeed, Inc.'s billing data mart, supporting a move to Zuora for invoicing and subscription management. Led the introduction of their payments for credit card processor integration and payment systems platformization.
  • Served as a cross-platform product lead for a growth-stage edtech software concern. Led all strategic and tactical development to drive business growth for Intervene.com's 2023 and 2024 product initiatives.

Product Director

2014 - 2016
Elation Media
  • Led the feature roadmap, strategic product vision, and project management for Creativebug, a subscription online video learning platform, through a 10x subscription growth cycle during an 18 month cycle.
  • Led the development team through its critical subscription growth. Increased its engagement metrics by 3x and conversion rates by 2.5x by optimizing page design, A/B testing, CTA optimization, content placement, page SEO, and feature development.
  • Managed delivery for the desktop, mobile web, and app (iOS & Android) experiences. Optimized feature impact and engagement by 3x through ongoing A/B testing, page design, funnel conversion points, and MVP development process.
  • Scaled our internal processes and systems to maintain development staffing during that exponential growth curve, increase our efficiency, and hold a 0-growth cost structure to drive our move to profitability.

Product Owner

2013 - 2014
INSZoom
  • Led the strategic alliance with Microsoft, using it as a model for the company’s future enterprise solution integrations. Managed the definition of processes, relationships, roll-out, and delivery paradigms for expansion to the enterprise market.
  • Defined and implemented best-practices product management and product marketing structure for the organization while working along-side the CEO and CTO. Key evangelist and scrum master to introduce Scrum development across the company.
  • Led the core development team for the internationalization of the core SaaS CMS product with an 18-month roadmap to deliver 90 countries and open international market expansion for the company.
  • Led the development go-to-market plan and product launch of the SaaS I-9 E-Verification product, leading to its introduction and first five enterprise customers.

Product Director

2012 - 2013
Whitesky, Inc.
  • Led the roll-out and configuration on-boarding all new strategic partners to WhiteSky’s core desktop, iOS, and Android security-client platforms including Comcast, Cox, and AOL.
  • Co-led the 2012/2013 product roadmap and go-to-market plans working with senior management, sales, and technology teams across a matrixed organization to drive 2013 business goals.
  • Led the process and technology development for partner configuration to optimize the app and desktop client installations.

Senior Product Manager

2011 - 2012
Yahoo!
  • Led the optimization, deployment, and integration of the Universal Header across all (25+) properties and (15+) global locations of the Yahoo! Network.
  • Optimized a 5% lift in network search revenue and a 7% network engagement through front-end design, A/B testing, and KPI analysis.
  • Managed all hosted integrations, API modifications, and core product business changes for all of Yahoo's properties.

Product Strategy Director

2008 - 2011
Experian, Inc.
  • Designed and implemented a ground-up product innovation program for 2009–2011 product planning for the QAS business unit (a $100 million software and data solutions provider) to support a 15% lift in annual sales.
  • Developed business and product plans for QAS email and mobile validation, SaaS platform development, UNIX platform strategy, SME and government sector propositions, and ongoing data acquisition strategy.
  • Delivered strategic product-marketing modeling tools to the organization through market analysis, studies, and business modeling.
  • Managed a product team of five. Designed and executed a Knowledge Management program, re-launching QAS’s sales training with a focus on competitive and market positioning.
  • Led all business operations and the commercial development of QAS’s core reference data assets.
  • Redesigned and overhauled QAS’s data resell practices to drive sales by aligning legal compliance, sales training, best practices, and product development to corporate strategy in 2008 and 2009.

Senior European Product Manager

2005 - 2008
Yahoo!
  • Launched Yahoo! Answers as the European product owner, from its inception to an audience of 18 million unique monthly users across five EU markets, using organic web channels, SEO, and funnel optimization.
  • Reduced site abuse and customer care queue rates by 25% through a five-person pan-European community management team, customer care resourcing, and best practices UGC management.
  • Managed site ad modules and sponsored content development to drive $10 million in annual revenue across the product.
  • Led the Personals product with a product development team of six, including three direct reports to deliver local product enhancements, billing programs, and ongoing site operations.
  • Optimized the Personals site engagement, billing offers, marketing campaigns, and white label partners to increase user lifetime value by 10% in 2005-2006.

Product Manager

2000 - 2005
AOL
  • Led the EU product features for AOL Communication and Entertainment products in the German and UK markets. Products included: eMail and messaging applications, Flash-based webmail, AOL Radio, Media Players, online games, and music search products.
  • Managed new product business planning, road mapping, promotion mix, competitive analysis, new product requirements, concepts, and deployment.
  • Managed the internal resource processes with brand marketing, PR, content, project management, and local product development resources.
  • Managed product requirements for member acquisition, retention, and billing programs in the AOL Marketing, Member Acquisition organization.
  • Managed the technical program for the spin-off sub-account yielding 600,000 additional subscriptions in Q2, 2002, direct marketing and retention mail programs, international web registration, and AOL member registration technology development.

Project History

Creativebug Product Owner

As product director, I led the Creativebug site and apps through an end-to-end redesign, driving the product and development team through a 10x subscription growth in 18 months.

I was the product owner on this project and had to place a strong focus on proper delivery and the high quality of our final deliveries. I managed all project planning, Jira administration, milestones, roadmaps, user stories, UAT, resource coordination, and time management. This was a two-year project that entailed doing an end-to-end quantitative evaluation of the product, looking for trouble spots in bounce rates, drop off points, user disengagement, and where the site failed to convert subscribers.
In the process of optimizing the flow, I led the redesign and rebuild of all core pages to be harmonized into a few workable SEO-driven templates, an engaging video viewing class page, optimized CTAs content viewing, and a clear path and value proposition to subscribing to the site. I created a new product for this business that acquired, converted, retained, and monetized its traffic. The product took the subscription levels through a 10x growth rate during that 18 month period.

Western Union Kiosk Redesign

http://www.westernunion.com

As product owner, I led the initiatives for Western Union's kiosk refresh and full end-to-end redesign, optimizing the user flow and front end to lift overall transactions by 10%.

I was responsible for coordinating end user requirements, UX specifications, staging requirements for each two-week sprint cycle, and ensuring that our builds shipped according to specifications. Additionally, I managed a six-month rolling roadmap to facilitate the end-to-end redesign of the platform on Angular architecture. The end refresh of the product yielded an increase of 10% more staged transactions and a superior, more robust technical stack.

INSZoom Program Leader

http://www.inszoom.com

INSZoom was repositioning itself as an enterprise solution provider for its legal case management software, which it was delivering to law firms. I successfully led the paradigm pilot working with two multinational customers.

INSZoom was repositioning itself as an enterprise solution provider for its legal case management software, which it was delivering to law firms. The enterprise program was based on the existing product feature set, and the delivery to several key pilot customers, including Microsoft, which needed to have excellence in its roll-out and implementation.
I created a project structure to ensure consistent and on-time deliveries to enterprise customers. These included clear technical documentation, communications, milestone checkpoints, risk log, project plans, delivery roadmaps, resource allocation, project scoping, and ongoing operations support. I was successful in the initial pilot roll-out of the enterprise application, and my diligence on quality delivery enabled INSZoom to secure three more enterprise pilot accounts within the first year of the program's introduction.

Education

1998 - 1999

Master's Degree in International Marketing

Thunderbird School of Global Management - Phoenix, Arizona, USA

1997 - 1998

Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Operations Management

Weatherhead School of Management | Case Western Reserve - Cleveland, Ohio, USA

1991 - 1995

Bachelor of Arts Degree in Liberal Arts

St. Olaf College - Northfield, Minnesota, USA

Certifications

APRIL 2020 - PRESENT

Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)

Scrum.org

OCTOBER 2015 - PRESENT

Certified Scrum Professional

Scrum Alliance

MARCH 2005 - PRESENT

Prince2 Foundation

Prince2 Foundation

NOVEMBER 2004 - PRESENT

Certified Professional Marketer

American Marketing Association

Skills

Tools

Jira, Microsoft Project, Asana, Trello

Paradigms

Scrum, B2C, Agile Product Management, Agile, Waterfall Development, Kanban, B2B2C, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C)

Other

Product Management, Technical Product Management, Product Delivery, Web Platforms, Product Thinking, Product Owner, Product Ownership, Team Leadership, New Product Development, Best Practices, Mobile Apps, Mobile Applications, Product Strategy, Project Scoping, Project Tracking, On-page SEO, B2B, Product Marketing, Web Development, Mobile App Development, Strategy, Growth, Optimization, Project Management, PSM-1, Product Design, Cloud Platforms, Business Analysis, Management, Marketing, IT Operations Management (ITOM), Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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