Paul Dan Cantor
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Cluj-Napoca, Cluj County, Romania
Toptal member since February 8, 2021
Paul is a highly adaptive product manager with a business-oriented mindset. He has worked with multiple teams to deliver complex projects and help start-ups define their product strategy, MVP, and growth objectives. Paul managed a feature that increased engagement by 200% and revenue by 100%. He has expertise in the advertising, eCommerce, online gaming, gambling, and health and fitness industries. Paul has delivered iOS and Android applications as well as fully functional websites and features.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Software Development
- Communication
- Organization
- Product Management
- Product Ownership
- Requirements
- Requirements Analysis
- Story Mapping
Work Experience
Product Owner | Junior Product Manager
Qwertee Limited
- Worked with the CEO to build the roadmap and deliver a brand-new initiative.
- Trained and implemented agile best practices while managing the project and other initiatives. Wore multiple hats, such as a project manager, product manager, QA, and researcher.
- Switched the whole architecture and tech stack of the product while minimizing the business impact. Identified critical parts and made a plan of iterative delivery so the business could run without interruptions.
Agile Product Manager
Superbet
- Researched the market to understand if there is a need for a product proposed by senior management. Composed the research of data analysis, customer research, and customer interviews.
- Created the development team from scratch. After the technical interview was passed, I made sure that the candidates had the proper mindset for the work we wanted to do. Now the team is set as an example at the company level.
- Defined the ways of working and refined the processes and meetings so the team could be focused on delivery while providing feedback, status, and support when needed.
- Gathered enough information from the customers to support the business case or to drop some ideas which did not represent a pain point for the customer or a desired feature.
- Worked on synchronizing teams and reducing the dependencies as much as possible to speed up the development and increase the delivered quality.
- Defined customer support processes, issue responses, and ensured high-quality post-release support.
- Defined the success metrics that need to be followed and adapted the backlog accordingly to the market feedback.
Product Owner
Connatix
- Collaborated with the senior product management team to create and define product roadmap and team backlog.
- Implemented relevant ways of working to facilitate the business need. Switched from Scrum to Kanban framework to increase the team's responsiveness to a highly dynamic business environment.
- Collaborated with the design team to ensure constant feedback and communication from business and technology stakeholders.
- Created visibility and planning upfront as much as possible given the fast-paced environment of the team backlog.
- Planned the release strategy for important features and decided what to validate during A/B tests run before 100% release of the functionality.
Product Owner
Flutter Entertainment
- Collaborated with the product management team to prioritize and define the product backlog and initiatives based on its vision.
- Developed a product from idea to release. Pitched the functionality to senior executives and led the entire development process.
- Created iOS and Android applications for top company products.
- Assisted UI/UX by providing requirements and gathering feedback from both business and technology perspectives.
- Led initiatives and worked closely with the marketing team to ensure that products aligned with the upcoming marketing campaigns for certain sports events of the year.
- Managed the content operation team based on the content strategy created and agreed upon together with the marketing team.
- Monitored the product's performance and new features to understand the user behavior and needs and compared the metrics with the product KPIs.
Quality Assurance Engineer
Fortech SRL
- Developed test cases and a testing plan for releases.
- Planned and executed testing during production releases.
- Learned about QA automation concepts and developed scripts in C# using Selenium WebDriver.
Project History
Arcade iOS and Android App
Led the design and creation of the requirements for the application. Prioritized the backlog and defined the epics, features, and user stories. Assisted the design team in maintaining the same user experience as on the web.
The web product was used by millions of users worldwide. Building the app was quite a challenge. When the project started, I had the following responsibilities.
1. Gathered requirements from all stakeholders
2. Created the epic board
3. Split the epics into features and user stories
4. Coordinated the design and development team to ensure no blockers and the application was pixel perfect.
5. Conducted user acceptance testing prior to submission to Apple and Google.
The application was released two weeks before the deadline. It was received very well. However, it has undergone many changes since then.
Gaming Lobby to Cross-sell Customers
Led the project from idea to release. Worked on the business case, pitch, customer research, discovery workshops, backlog preparation, backlog refinement, release planning, post-release maintenance, improvement, and monitoring.
The idea behind it was to promote games and offers as quickly as possible, change the entire offer based on the time of the year, sports events, calendar events, and holidays, making the gaming offering as appealing as possible for the customer.
When the project was handed over, a personalization initiative was ongoing. This meant that we tried to make a profile for each customer and promote games and promotions based on their profile.
After the release, the cross-sell lobby saw a 200% increase in activities and revenue compared with the older version. It was transformed into the main revenue driver for the gaming side of the business.
As an idea, cross-sell lobby revenue was more significant than all other gaming products combined.
This was an idea I wanted to test. It was released in less than six months and proved to be one of the company's most successful products.
Wallet for Retail Betting
Managed the market and customer research as well as product development lifecycle of an eWallet dedicated to retail and online gambling and gaming.
The scope of this product was to allow customers to payout the winning tickets or gaming sessions directly in a wallet and use that money to either place another ticket/play another session, withdraw the money, or transfer them to the online account.
The product was the first in the market and started to grow.
The main challenge for this product was to build a team that was willing to create it, from developers to researchers, to legal and designers; I was responsible for managing all of them and finding and proposing hires.
After the team was built, we defined and established all the ways of working, tools, and processes that can help us create the best products as fast as possible.
Now the team is set as an example at the company level, and other teams are learning from us.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Management
Bábes Bolyai University - Cluj Napoca, Romania
Bachelor's Degree in Business and Computer Science
Bábes Bolyai University - Cluj Napoca, Romania
High School Diploma in Computer Science
Petru Rares College - Beclean, Romania
Certifications
Certified Product Owner
Scrum Alliance
Skills
Tools
Trello, Confluence, Slack, Microsoft Visio, TargetProcess, YouTrack, Google Analytics, Jira
Paradigms
Scrum, Kanban, Requirements Analysis, Agile Software Development, Testing, Waterfall Development, Agile Project Management
Platforms
Monday.com
Other
IT Business Analysis, Communication, Organization, User Requirements, Story Mapping, User Stories, Product Ownership, Requirements, Product Owner, Stakeholder Management, Product Roadmaps, Backlog Grooming, Scrum Product Owner, Microsoft Office, Mockups, Product Management, eCommerce, Content Management Systems (CMS), Software QA, Business Development, Management, Marketing, User Research, Backlog Management, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Customer Interviews, Wireframing, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Team Building, Team Management, Remote Team Leadership, Resource Management, Project Management, Organizational Behavior (OB), IT Product Management, Product Research, Data Analysis, Customer Research, Market Research, Design, User Flows, Release Management, Quality Assurance (QA), QA Testing, Technical Product Management, Startups
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