Diego Marano

Role: In my capacity as Chief Product Officer at Qudo.ai, a Martech startup based in London, I've been the architect behind both product and project roadmaps leading product development and validation.

Key responsibilities:

• Structuring the strategic vision of the product, evaluating value proposition, disruptive potential, business model scalability through PNL modelling.
• Establishing priorities based on project vision, core values, objectives, opportunities and constraints.
• Regularly engaging with investors for updates and strategy sessions, effectively conveying progress and trajectory of the product against relevant OKRs.
• Instituting Agile methodologies across various departments, fostering a culture of flexibility, collaboration and iterative progress.
• Contributing to design and development of company's comprehensive financial plan.
• Participating in staffing plan setting and implementation.

Achievements:

• Led design, development, delivery and validation of innovative services such as: adversarial clustering, automated targeting and persona GPT.
• Contributed to securing 2 rounds of investment ($5.8M in total).

Role: In charge of envisioning, developing and delivering a suite of AI-powered solutions for Intelligent Publishing and Product Profiling, I led a talented team of Engineers and Data Scientists. Together, we created a cutting-edge service that harnessed the power of NLU and Gen AI to uncover, decipher and compose captivating narratives to the end of driving customer engagement. As a leader of a GPT2/GPT3 beta testing team, I had the privilege of operating at the forefront of one of the most disruptive technologies in the global AI landscape years before the advent of Chat GPT.

Key responsibilities:

• Crafting, refining and adapting a viable Agile roadmap throughout the entire product lifecycle.
• Scouting and evaluating highly disruptive technologies to be developed or integrated, amplifying our competitive advantage.
• Leading prototyping and product configurations through iterative learning, refining and A/B testing.
• Liaising with external stakeholders (beta testers, partners, investors) managing expectations through relevant OKRs.

Achievements:

• Successfully launched multiple AI-powered products such as automated manuscript assessment, review digest and style tuner.
• Demonstrated the ability to turn visionary ideas into practical, market-ready solutions that address real-world needs.

Role: Having responsibility on the Kobo Writing Life (KWL) platform in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Italy, my role entailed driving platform development and fostering business growth within those territories. Under my guidance, KWL achieved significant milestones, securing its position as the second highest-grossing category in the Rakuten Kobo Store in terms of net revenues and the top category in terms of units sold.

Key responsibilities:

• Designing and refining product and project roadmaps, establishing a comprehensive prioritization framework.
• Selecting meaningful OKRs across various domains, effectively communicating progress and goals to key stakeholders.
• Leading cross-functional teams, consisting of up to 20 individuals, to conceptualize, develop and launch new product features from inception to delivery across three distinct domains (distribution, marketplace and content QA).
• Developing business development and go-to-market plans based on territorial market analysis and product-led growth strategies for business expansion.

Achievements:

• Elevated KWL to a dominant platform position in the UK, Ireland and Italy.
• Successfully expanded KWL's footprint into new market thanks to the development of 2 new domains: service marketplace and content QA.

Role: Being responsible for multiple digital services on Waterstone's website and mobile apps, I worked on integrating Kindle technology and devices with Waterstone's environment contributing to develop, from ground-up, a new multimillion product category within a O2O environment.

Key responsibilities:

• Designing and refining the roadmap, setting clear product objectives and establishing prioritization strategies.
• Selecting appropriate metrics, achievable KPIs and meaningful milestones across various domains, effectively communicating progress and goals to key stakeholders.
• Overseeing all Scrum ceremonies and artifacts to facilitate efficient project execution.
• Managing product quality assurance across the entire testing pyramid, ensuring robust and reliable outcomes.
• Training, coaching and monitoring of in-store sales force to the end of granting effective deployment of new services.

Achievements

• Development and delivery of a multimillion product category within an O2O environment, merging traditional book retailing with digital reading services.

Role: Serving as country representative, I developed Elsevier's business up to €7M annual turnover, managing multiple product categories across different market segments.