Yoni Balkind
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Toptal member since May 20, 2019
Yoni is a commercially minded product manager with a legal background and a passion for productized services and online information tools. He is a certified Agile product owner with a business management diploma. His expertise includes market research, customer discovery, and business modeling, as well as the successful launch of MVPs. As a systems thinker and growth marketer, Yoni excels at automating workflows, building audiences, and generating sustainable revenue streams.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Business Operations
- Content Marketing
- Jobs to be Done (JTBD)
- Legal Research
- Legal Technology (Legaltech)
- Product Strategy
- Project Delivery
Work Experience
Founder and Principle Consultant
Onyo Marketing
- Founded an advisory firm for the legal and professional services industry. Assisted law firms with service design, productization, pricing, lead generation and management, client onboarding, content marketing, and online platforms.
- Built a team of remote legal researchers and content producers to service legal clients.
- Designed best practices around content strategies and lead generation for law firms, centered on alternative legal services.
Operations and Product Consultant
FlatFee Corporatiom
- Helped get the product to launch through extensive iteration and design sprints, business modeling, and customer validation.
- Conducted market research by identifying competitor products, reviewing and testing these, and defining a market position strategy for FlatFee Corp that addressed its strengths and weaknesses relative to competitors.
- Worked with CEO to design pricing and GTM strategy.
Senior Product Manager
LexisNexis South Africa
- Supervised the portfolio of legal information products spanning 30 areas of law.
- Managed a distributed team of developers and content providers.
- Oversaw the product life cycle across the web and mobile platform.
- Initiated and drove a product UX redesign and relaunch.
- Designed and implemented a workflow process for a distributed team.
- Architected the pricing and marketing strategy in conjunction with sales and marketing function.
- Promoted the product through speaking engagements, client demos and PR articles.
- Achieved company leading annual revenue growth over a 4 year rolling period.
Product Manager
MultiChoice Pty Ltd
- Launched a portfolio of country websites with country-specific marketing, self-service functions, and TV guide API integration.
- Launched Android and iOS apps for leading sports news brand.
- Managed the production of an eCommerce store built in Magento.
Product Portfolio Manager
CQS Technology Holdings
- Oversaw a portfolio of software products for the financial services and corporate governance industries.
- Produced tax software suite enabling accountants to bulk load, calculate, and e-file tax submissions for hundreds of clients at a time.
- Supervised the transition from desktop legacy software to a browser-based solution.
Project History
GoLegal
Launched an online legal publication. Grew the readership to 150,000 per month with over 15,000 email subscribers.
Lexafari.com
Founded and built an online marketplace for alternative legal services.
As a research platform, Lexafari provides legal guides and checklists for startups, business owners, and in-house counsel. Our global guides are designed to help readers with company formation and maintenance, global hiring, and IP protection, among others.
While our legal guides may attract our readers, our purpose is to help them find services that match their research topics.
eCommerce Store in Magento
Oversaw the development of an eCommerce store in Magento.
Legal Heavies
Created an MVP/prototype for a lawyer directory. The concept of the directory was that it only listed individual lawyers, not law firms, and would allow users to contact lawyers with legal queries directly.
The site is custom-built in WordPress, utilizing custom post types and fields.
Alternative Student Financing in South Africa - Market Research
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dmEjv9qwx0Dnd9FTE79Hgsym3qghpcbj8SA3vdeajCI/edit?usp=sharingConducted a research project to investigate the viability of introducing an income share agreement (ISA) financing model in South Africa. Interviewed industry experts and reviewed global case studies and research.
The completed 40-slide deck can be seen here https://tinyurl.com/yckkzwas
I also produced a thought leadership article after that, proposing a public-private co-operative model to address student financing - https://hackernoon.com/can-government-income-share-agreements-fix-higher-education-ih383yrp
Education
Postgraduate Diploma in Management (Business Administration)
Wits Business School - Johannesburg, South Africa
Bachelor of Arts & Bachelor of Laws Degree in Law
University of the Witwatersrand - Johannesburg, South Africa
Diploma in Web Design
CityVarsity - Cape Town, South Africa
Certifications
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Skills
Tools
Trello, Asana, Balsamiq Mockups, Figma
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Scrum, Design Thinking, Agile Workflow, Rapid Prototyping
Platforms
Blockchain
Industry Expertise
Marketplaces
Other
WordPress, Project Delivery, Project Planning, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Product Strategy, Operations, Social Media Platforms, Business Operations, Product Ownership, Digital Product Management, Digital Project Management, Product Development, Product Management, Business Analysis, Requirements, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Models, Product Design, Product Marketing, Product Frameworks, Innovation, Product Discovery, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Legal, B2B, Content Marketing, Feature Roadmaps, Roadmaps, Business to Business (B2B), Feature Prioritization, Legal Technology (Legaltech), Lean Startups, Prototyping, Theory of Constraints, Product Research, Startup Consulting, Lean Project Management, Lean Development, Project Management, Strategy, Digital Strategy, Contract Management, Law, Mockups, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), User Experience (UX), SEO Tools, Legal Research, Jobs to be Done (JTBD), Compliance, Regulatory Compliance, Startups, Business Processes, Business Process Optimization, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Product Consultant, Early-stage Startups, Lead Generation, Business Cases, Pricing Strategy, Go-to-market Strategy, Two-sided Marketplaces, Growth Strategy, Customer Insights, Business Process Automation, SEO Content, Fintech, Windows, Knowledge Management, Process Design, Process Modeling, Process Optimization, Publishing, Reports, Business Strategy, eCommerce, Budget Modeling, Aha!, ClickUp, Customer Discovery, Content Management, Wireframing, Business Model Canvas, Email Marketing, Product Growth, MVP Design, Business Modeling, Market Research, Software as a Service (SaaS), Process Improvement, Business Process Analysis, Alternative Investments, Pitch Presentations, Discovery, Capital Raising, Consulting, Service, Web Services, Content Strategy, Directory Submission, Customer Acquisition
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