Jiri Fiala, Project Manager in Prague, Czech Republic
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Jiri Fiala

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Project Manager

Location
Prague, Czech Republic
Toptal Member Since
August 5, 2020

Jiri is a goal-driven C-level executive with over 18 years of global experience in project and program management, product creation, enterprise architecture, technical roles, and business technology application. He has led various teams of up to 450 people across dozens of countries. His client portfolio contains both Fortune 500 companies in retail, banking, automotive, and eCommerce industries, as well as Europe's best startups in fintech, blockchain, and SaaS.

Project Highlights

RPA Sales Platform
After eight months of development time, a fully automated lead generation engine was created. Currently processing monthly 960 million crawls and around 10,000 interactions with potential leads.
Security Derivates and Crypto Assets Exchange
The company's successful launch and its flagship product within heavily regulated EU framework and success in fundraising effort from Idea through Seed to Series A. 25,000 users signed up within two weeks from launch.
Volkswagen Group - Global Dealership Support Platform
A successful project discovery and proposal with a new enterprise architecture led to a 38 million EUR contract. The new solution was then deployed at 600+ sites in 24 countries.

Expertise

Work Experience

General Partner

2022 - PRESENT
DLTG Fund
  • Acted as a GP, created the whole VC fund concept, and its thesis, secured initial LP investors, and managed the legal and regulatory setup.
  • Hired a team of highly skilled entrepreneurs, senior managers, and associates to run the fund operations and process over 150 startup investment requests per month.
  • Raised over $15 million from family offices, institutional investors, and UHNWI to the fund.

Managing Partner

2021 - PRESENT
Indigi Labs
  • Created a completely new venture studio that has, in the last four years, completed over 50 startup builds in 16 countries in various industries like B2B SaaS, defense industry, blockchain, metaverse, GameFi, aerospace, and cybersecurity.
  • Envisioned, hired, and managed a team of 60+ professionals and senior managers on GTM, product, and tech in 12 countries.
  • Established a brand and worldwide positioning of the venture studio within the startup and venture capital ecosystem. At the same time managed to get it from zero to 4,000,000+ annual revenue.

Strategy Advisor

2019 - PRESENT
Self-employed
  • Acted as a product owner and strategy advisor for almost three dozen startups with over $4 billion annual revenues in fintech, regtech, high-tech, and investment groups globally.
  • Acted as an investment expert on high, emerging, and radical tech for several private equities (PE) and venture capital (VC) investment funds.
  • Evaluated several proposals for the EU Commission as the expert on radical tech.
  • Created a new business modeling framework, currently in a test phase. Reworked it into an automated tool to further test the hypotheses and model behind it.
  • Served as an external product manager for a few new projects in high-tech development.

CTO

2021 - 2021
Locksign
  • Acted as an interim, part-time CTO to take over a project from the original India outsourced team to perform full due diligence on an existing software solution and find a team to rework it and launch.
  • Built a full ecosystem for document signatures with unique patented solutions.
  • Led a team of three full-stack developers while providing product owner and manager function as well.
  • Prepared the product for an official public launch: martech stacks for growth, launch plans, PR, and marketing-propagation planning.

Group DevOps Director

2020 - 2021
AURES Holdings
  • Managed the complete process change in the whole development organization. Took them from manual builds and testing to a full hybrid cloud DevOps-based on Microsoft Azure and a local DC (Kubernetes and Docker).
  • Led multiple teams of more than 30 people, including a mix of product and project managers, software architects, and developers.
  • Introduced the SAFe and Agile methodology across the whole organization.
  • Implemented changes, positively impacting over 3,000 employees in multiple countries and businesses with more than €800 million annual revenue.

CTO

2020 - 2021
Converting Ads
  • Led a team of 12 developers and DevOps engineers and was fully responsible for them as a part-time CTO.
  • Worked on a real-time bidding platform for lead generation, affiliate networks, and conversion tracking, handling transactions with over $60 million annual volume.
  • Built fully automated cloud DevOps with multiple sync environments.
  • Managed the complete process change in the whole organization, introducing scaled agile framework (SAFe), agile frameworks, and robotic process automation (RPA) to all related processes.

CTO

2018 - 2021
INDIGI
  • Created a full growth marketing automation stack that reaches approximately 50,000-engaged users every week across various social media channels.
  • Created a fully automated opportunities-generation engine, processing 960+ million monthly web crawls and follow-up RPA automation in search of opportunities.
  • Created a 95% automated RPA sales lead engine that processes over 360 daily conversations about startup fundraising, growth, or investment.
  • Developed a martech and adtech platform with robotic process automation features.

CTO

2019 - 2020
Nitton Platform SE
  • Completed the product roadmap and continued with an ongoing engagement on strategic management.
  • Helped the client to build a solid business case, product roadmap, and 12-month plan, which led to a seed investment of €1.8 million.
  • Collaborated with the entire C-board team on the definition of digital marketing strategy aligned to the team's go-to-market plan.
  • Worked on the fintech and regtech platform for worldwide payments using blockchain technology.

CEO and Founder

2016 - 2019
Simplifate
  • Performed several niche-sector research and business-model simulations to understand hidden inefficiencies in the European B2B enterprise software market.
  • Built, from scratch, an interesting go-to-market plan and full company projection. The company was bootstrapped with a minimum seed investment of $3 million in total revenue in 21 months.
  • Created new business models for our products and joint-venture products with partners extensively.
  • Created a brand new team of 26 developers and provided leadership to the team.
  • Oversaw complete financial, operations, technology, and personnel planning.
  • Successfully launched several high-tech products in a SaaS vertical and cooperated on more significant deals with major regional players.
  • Exited the company to a UK-based investment fund.
  • Focused on machine learning, fintech, and eCommerce clients at this high-tech development studio.

Interim CEO

2017 - 2018
Angel Ventures Group
  • Led a small team for product growth with a focus on user acquisition.
  • Managed two outsourced DevOps teams. They were introduced and trained in Agile.
  • Performed market analysis using primary and secondary research methodologies to build an evolving product roadmap.
  • Managed funding and government negotiations.
  • Created full company business plans, negotiated with investors, and secured $2 million in funding.

Business Development Manager: Central and Eastern Europe

2013 - 2016
HPE
  • Created extended teams within an organization with a focus on new service offerings and product creation.
  • Headed a new product line idea and test prototype that later created a yearly revenue of €380 million across EU countries: a tool for assessing hybrid-cloud options and providing an application, re-platforming strategy recommendations.
  • Served in the role of a company evangelist. Propagated a new style of an IT vision within the region, presenting and forming strategies with alliance partners: Gartner, IDC, Sitecore, Mobile Iron, and Microsoft.
  • Introduced DevOps, cloud microservices, greenhouse, smart grid, and shared economy product visions to major HPE clients in the CEE, helping them to form their 3- to 10-year strategy.
  • Researched and created the product strategy for the low-code platform Omnius and successfully sold the MVP to several fintech clients.
  • Co-led smaller teams of up to 15 people.

Product Owner

2012 - 2013
Independent Quant
  • Acted as a full-time futures (Oil, SP500, and DAX) trader on the European and US markets.
  • Developed my own algorithms and strategies and tested them out in the market.
  • Solely handled the whole design, architecture, and delivery of a high-frequency, scalping trading system.
  • Performed extensive market research and hypothesis formulations.
  • Created a forecast-modeling system for wire money transfer delays.

Account Delivery Manager: Europe, Middle East, and Africa

2011 - 2012
HPE
  • Served as the delivery manager for multinational F1000's clients within the EMEA region.
  • Managed detailed financial planning, applied technical architecture, business-case development, and negotiation in contract/sales changes.
  • Led teams of up to 150 DevOps engineers in 20 countries.
  • Oversaw financial and operational performance on EMEA-wide accounts worth $860 million in revenue.
  • Designed and created a new project-rating system for the DevOps team, heavily modifying the scrum of my design. It is still in use.

Enterprise Solution Architect: Europe, Middle East, and Africa

2008 - 2011
EDS
  • Took projects through the full lifecycle: presale, enterprise architecture, design, deployment, and execution.
  • Defined the roadmap implementation plans on multiple parallel product streams.
  • Successfully finished more than 65 projects in 20 countries (mainly EU), competing with all major global outsourcing players.
  • Ensured compliance with designed product architecture and delivered on time, in the expected quality and within budget estimations.
  • Managed multiple DevOps teams spanning 14 EU countries.
  • Received an award two times from a client: "Most meaningful IT project impact of the year."

Operational Lead: Central and Eastern Europe

2005 - 2008
EDS
  • Increased the team performance of engineers under my supervision by a measure of 12% yearly.
  • Served in the role of lead developer and tester for Intermec CRM.
  • Oversaw full support portfolio: WAN, LAN, EUC, hosting, applications, PBX, AD, and messaging.
  • Leveraged multiple outsourcing providers and their resources to enable financial flexibility.
  • Established data-driven goal performance metrics for the whole region.

RPA Sales Platform

After eight months of development time, a fully automated lead generation engine was created. Currently processing monthly 960 million crawls and around 10,000 interactions with potential leads.

Objective:
Develop a new integrated tech stack to process robotic sales through big data engagement.

Role:
CTO

Result:
After eight months of development time, a fully automated lead generation engine was created. Currently processing monthly 960 million crawls and starting around 10,000 interactions with potential leads.

Detail:
Managed a team of 10+ distributed developers, designers, and marketing automation experts. The project is expanding rapidly with an MRR growth of over 34% monthly.

Tech Stack:
Google Cloud, BigQuery, Integromat, .Net Core, Python

Lessons Learned:
Latest advancements and usage of HiPaaS and RPA tools on the market. Formed partnerships with the leaders in the field.

Martech Analytics Platform

http://www.behavee.com

A project discovery led to the new product roadmap and reworked the business strategy outline leading to success in a follow-up investment round of $1.5 million.

Objective:
Perform full project discovery and propose a product roadmap redesign to suit a follow-up investment round.

Role:
Project and Product Manager

Result:
A project discovery led to the new product roadmap and reworked the business strategy outline, leading to a follow-up investment round of $1.5 million.

Detail:
Performed full due diligence of the product and team with its own N6DD methodology according to the significant potential investor's wishes. Helped out the team to redesign the product map and find its way back to the product-market fit thesis. Introduced them to the applied scrum automation toolset and helped to set up the process.

Tech Stack:
Microsoft Azure, .Net Core, SQL

Lessons Learned:
How to synthesize a new product thesis into a successful investment round.

Security Derivates and Crypto Assets Exchange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDaEdww7tsE

The company's successful launch and its flagship product within heavily regulated EU framework and success in fundraising effort from Idea through Seed to Series A. 25,000 users signed up within two weeks from launch.

Objective:
Create a full product-market fit strategy, hypothesis verification criteria, and roadmap to accomplish it. Manage the company in the execution of those.

Role:
CEO

Result:
A successful launch of the company and its flagship product within heavily regulated EU framework and success in fundraising effort from idea through seed to Series A.

Detail:
Part of the team behind one of closely watched cryptocurrencies exchanges to launch in 2018 (in the role of interim CEO as my own company had partial share and interest there). Negotiated with national and EU regulators on transparency towards bank houses, asset classification, and regtech licensing requirements.

Tech Stack:
Established product with enterprise-grade hybrid cloud security distribution, HSM keys, code vaults, and custom security solutions. Used a combination of .Net Core, Python, Java microservices solution with distributed storage options (MariaDB, Redis, Oracle), and latest microservices orchestration tools (Docker, Kubernetes).

Lessons Learned:
How to made data-driven decisions for company growth tied to technical execution. How to establish operational and business models with metrics linked to performance evaluation of responsible people.

New Due Diligence Model: N6PDD

https://www.beautiful.ai/player/-MDU8WhKh5dyfO2enfaP

The model was successfully tested on over 150 startups globally. It is currently in use by several VC partners. The total company valuation processed by the model is over $11 billion.

Objective:
Create a new valuation model for high-tech and radical tech startups based on data science and prediction models.

Role:
Product Owner

Result:
Model successfully tested on over 150+ startups globally. Currently in use by several VC partners. Total company valuation processed by the model over $11 billion.

Detail:
Complete product creation of a new valuation model through combined algorithms usage from idea conception, through detailed research and modeling tests, to final product delivery. Adaptable to rapidly shifting business models due to their platform economy nature, be it in subtle varieties like sharing, gig, hybrid, open innovation, or decentralized blockchain application. At its core is done by running six different independent algorithms (point of view) on the same core dataset (provided manually), but with different outside repositories allowed crawl data sets and macro forecast settings (growth, social, madtech metrics).

Tech Stack:
Google Cloud, BigQuery, Trifecta, Python, Integromat, Moz, BuzzSumo, Tensor Flow

Lessons Learned:
How to build/not to build a startup and their products on over 150 live examples. How to set up autonomous discovery, evaluation, and connection algorithms.

Volkswagen Group - Global Dealership Support Platform

https://www.vw.com/builder/

A successful project discovery and proposal with a new enterprise architecture led to a 38 million EUR contract. The new solution was then deployed at 600+ sites in 24 countries.

Objective:
Perform full project discovery, envision the enterprise architecture, and propose to a client a new approach to an existing platform.

Role:
Enterprise Architect and BDM

Result:
A successful project discovery and proposal with new enterprise architecture led to a 38 million EUR contract. The new solution was then deployed at 600+ sites in 24 countries.

Detail:
Support, automation, and knowledge platform for custom dealership solution deployment and monitoring at B2B Volkswagen partners locations. Served all brands that are part of the group and external dealers as well.

Tech Stack:
Microsoft Azure, .Net Core, MS SQL, Haven, IDOL

Lessons Learned:
Multiple parties negotiation (had to be approved by six brands and 24 countries. HW/SW global deployment and support bundle proposition.

Mountain Rage - Mobile Game Development

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5X4jf1Pk1o

This was a small success with a few hundred thousand downloads; it was not a commercial hit. Costs were recovered, and two other cross-platform titles followed it.

Objective:
Develop a medium-sized mobile game, test our understanding of B2C segments and logics driving mobile application downloads and usage—archive minor commercial success.

Role:
Business Stakeholder and Product Owner

Result:
A small success with a few hundred thousand downloads, not a commercial hit. Costs recovered. Followed by two other cross-platform titles.

Detail:
Designed full application logic, and led a small team of four developers and designers. From whiteboard sketches to the deployed game, both on Android and iPhone. Minor success with hundreds of thousands of downloads.

Tech Stack:
Xamarin, Ionic, Unity, Android, iOS

Lessons Learned:
Full mobile app design and launch cycle. A more in-depth understanding of the retail segment and human behavior-driven development.

KBC Group – Strategic Innovation and Cost Savings Program

A full analysis of the complete project and program portfolio led to a start of 34 separate projects with a budget of over €3 billion aimed at a 32% cost reduction and numerous innovations.

Objective:
Perform a broad program discovery across the whole KBC group IT projects portfolio in several countries of choice. Propose innovation and cost savings projects where feasible.

Role:
Enterprise Architect and Program Manager

Result:
A full analysis of the complete project and program portfolio led to a start of 34 separate projects with a budget of over €3 billion aimed at a 32% cost reduction and numerous innovations.

Detail:
Complete disassembly and recreation of the entire application and infrastructure portfolio using advanced data science project discovery services. Apply the latest theoretical methodologies against practical constraints in a multinational bank.

Tech Stack:
Elastic, Hadoop, REST

Lessons Learned:
How to run a massive project discovery, set up the board-driven KPIs for project success, and meticulously defend the outcome of the project thesis.

Vestoo – Blockchain Insurance Investment Platform

https://vesttoo.com/

Built a blockchain-based revolutionary risk management solution that manages actuarial insurance risks through the capital markets in less than four months. The solution handles billions of dollars of securitized blockchain assets.

Objective:
Plan and execute a high-tech product launch in less than three months.

Role:
Project Manager and Enterprise Architect

Result:
Built a blockchain-based revolutionary risk management solution that manages actuarial insurance risk's through the capital markets in less than four months. The solution handles billions of dollars of securitized blockchain assets.

Detail:
An MVP build with the fragmentation of existing insurance securities into smaller tokenized asset packages and their resale on the blockchain-connected marketplace. Complete project discovery and delivery provided. Managed a full team of 30+ developers, designers, and analysts.

Tech Stack:
Solidity, ETH, .Net Core, MariaDB

Lessons Learned:
How to run a fully remote MVP build across the globe with minimum specifications, fast.

NDA Gated eCommerce EU – Blockchain Loyalty Platform

Planned and modeled a deployment of a unified blockchain platform across a broad set of 40+ corporate eCommerce stores in Europe. The project got a green light with a €16+ million budget.

Objective:
Evaluate and discover business and technical requirements of a unified loyalty platform for dozens of multiple brands across all EU countries. Provide a feasibility study on tokenization and blockchain deployment of such a platform.

Role:
Enterprise Architect and Product Manager

Result:
Planned and modeled a deployment of a unified blockchain platform across a broad set of 40+ corporate eCommerce stores in Europe. The project got a green light with a €16+ million budget.

Detail:
Responsible for full requirements gathering, architecture, financial planning, and business case creation. Planned and modeled a deployment of a unified blockchain platform across a broad set of 40+ corporate eCommerce stores in Europe and prepared board.

Tech Stack:
jQuery, Bootstrap, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Node.js, Redis, MongoDB, JVM, EOS, GCP, AWS

Lessons Learned:
Project discovery greatly increased my understanding of current loyalty program dysfunctions and more extensive data set modeling biases—also legacy eCommerce integration issues with multinational holdings.

Mondelez Int. – M&A Due Diligence and Acquisition Integration

https://www.ft.com/content/fc754432-293d-11dc-a530-000b5df10621

Proposed a solution and future architecture got a green light from all global stakeholders, a new acquisition deal, and a program encompassing 34 countries with a value of €600 million was signed—41 separate projects completed within three years.

Objective:
Perform due diligence on the recently acquired biscuit business of Danone (34 countries, 38,000 people, and 14,000+ applications) and propose the best migration option to a unified enterprise tech stack. Perform the migration on a per-country project base.

Role:
Enterprise Architect and Project Manager

Result:
Proposed a solution and future architecture got a green light from all global stakeholders, a new acquisition deal, and a program encompassing 34 countries with a value of €600 million was signed—41 separate projects had been completed within the next three years.

Detail:
Responsible as a core architect for EMEA in Mondelez acquisition of Danone biscuits operations and follow up integration into existing outsourcing model with the current provider. Included high-level network and ERP partial join solution for temporary access, migration of a few hundred applications, and 15,000+ users across EMEA.

Tech Stack:
SAP, multiple ERP systems, global WAN, LDAP, AD, SMCC, LAMP, Java, RoR, .Net, Delphi, Lotus Notes, AS400

Lessons Learned:
Running multiple projects simultaneously, global company enterprise architecture principles and practice, managing large teams of over 400 people across multiple countries.

Sequent Fundraising Project

https://sequentworld.com/

Planned and launched a successful fundraising Series A for the company and reworked its long term strategic direction.

Objective:
Propose a new long-term company and fundraising strategy with respect to global qualified investor regulations.

Role:
Product Manager and Strategic Advisor

Result:
Planned and launched a successful fundraising Series A for the company and reworked its long-term strategic direction.

Detail:
Modeled full company financial projections for the next five years, created an outstanding pitch deck, business plans, and explored potential investors worldwide. Led a team of seven full-stack developers to deliver a new STO concept for fundraising.

Tech Stack:
WordPress, GCP, BigQuery, Integromat, Java, Solidity

Lessons Learned:
How to run a fully regulated global fundraising campaign and plan global supply chain product workflow.

Low Code ERP Platform for Innogy

https://github.com/simplifate/omnius

The project discovery results were a newly proposed low code consolidation platform at Innogy Group with a 3-year development plan for migration of all legacy applications. The project was delivered within two years and a $3.9 million budget.

Objective:
Run a project discovery (PD) and business requirements gathering for a set of dozens of non-critical legacy applications with the aim of their migration or re-platforming.

Role:
Enterprise Architect, Product Manager, and Project Manager

Result:
The PD results were a newly proposed low code consolidation platform at Innogy Group with a 3-year development plan for migration of all legacy applications. The project was delivered within two years and a $3.9 million budget.

Detail:
Managed a team of 30+ developers, designers, and business analysts that re-platformed 26 existing applications into a completely new lightweight platform within two years and on time and budget, as originally estimated.

Tech Stack:
PHP (Laravel), Java (Spring), Scala (Play), MongoDB, PostgresSQL, Oracle, Apache

Lessons Learned:
How to architect and deliver a fully working hybrid cloud solution and develop, from scratch, a multi-use low code platform. Later on, a subset of the platform was released under MIT.
1995 - 2001

Master's Degree in Electronical Computer Systems

COPTH Harfa - Prague, Czech Republic

MARCH 2019 - PRESENT

International Law in Digital Startup World

CERVO Institute

JUNE 2016 - PRESENT

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)

Scrum Alliance

FEBRUARY 2012 - PRESENT

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Institute (PMI)