I enjoy working with product and engineering teams to deliver delightful experiences for customers and businesses. My favorite part of product management is watching customers react positively to my products and features. I bring a system thinking approach to product problems and I love collaborating with stakeholders to generate creative approaches to building businesses.
About Me:
Kevin Thakkar has over 10 years of experience as a product leader. My experience has focused on creating and scaling new product lines as well as managing and mentoring teams to grow a portfolio of related products. I’ve grown product lines from $0 to $1 billion at two Pre-IPO companies with successful exits – Tubemogul (IPO and acquired by Adobe) and Vungle (acquired by Blackstone). I’ve also managed teams of product managers at iconic brands such as Square and Accenture to drive the transformation of businesses to next-generation platforms and business models. In the last decade, I have built products in Advertising, Marketing, Machine Learning, Analytics, and FinTech. I am a systems thinker with a strong bias for execution and I deeply care about creating products that improve the lives of customers.
The long version!
Kevin is currently a CFO (Chief Father Officer) and has been taking a break from his professional career to care for his children and let his wife pursue her own challenging role.
Before this break, Kevin was a Director of Product and Product Lead at Afterpay Inc. / Cash App. Kevin's role was to integrate the Afterpay servicing and payment flow into Cash App. The goal was to create a seamless Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) experience into Cash App, replacing the current high friction experience. This integration introduced millions of Cash App users to BNPL and supported the growth of the merchant consumer flywheel.
Prior to joining Cash App, Kevin was a Director of Product in the Applied Intelligence group at Accenture. Kevin was a key member of the "Grow SMB" initiative that achieved a revenue target of $Xbn in 2021. Kevin also created the roadmap for the future of GrowSMB, incorporating features such as conversational AI and marketing automation into the roadmap.
Before joining Accenture, Kevin was a Senior Director of Product at Vungle Inc. Vungle, now owned by Liftoff Inc, is a leader in mobile app user acquisition and monetization. In this role, Kevin managed multiple product teams, including product areas of Data Science, SDK, and Ad Formats. Kevin's teams launched Vungle's first API product that captured approximately 12% of overall revenue, speeding up customers adoption of the platform. Kevin was also the overall product and go-to-market leader for adopting Apple's iOS 14 privacy initiative and skAdnetwork. This initiative was crucial to Vungle's survival as it would result in deprecating user identity on iOS platforms, an integral part of Vungle's data science and product platform. Despite the extansial crisis, Kevin and his teams work helped retain 95% of customer revenue. These efforts resulted in Vungle being acquired by Blackstone Private Equity group for a publicly reported $750 million in 2020.
Prior to Vungle Inc, Kevin was Vice President and head of product at Vdopia Inc. (subsequently renamed to Chocolate Platform Inc.) There he transitioned Vdopia's existing customers from their legacy ad network product, to Vdopia's new programmatic marketplace. Kevin scaled Vdopia's mobile video marketplace to over $23 million despite the product transition. Kevin also launched a new ad mediation platform while at Vdopia, resulting in a sale of the product and providing much needed capital during a tough venture funding environment.
Prior to Vdopia Inc. Kevin earned his chops in product management at Tubemogul, a start-up in video advertising. Kevin's efforts helped Tubemogul achieve an IPO and eventually be acquired by Adobe Inc for $540 million. In this role Kevin launched and scaled a audience targeting product to $60 million in ad spend and was eventually promoted to Director of Product after 2.5 years in his first product role.
Before pivoting into tech, Kevin had an illustrious career in consulting and professional services at Marsh Inc. and Accenture Inc. Kevin holds a B.S. in mathematics and an MBA from the UC Berkeley and the Haas School of Business.
“A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat.”
- Deep Nishar, Managing Director Catalyst Partners
Skill Set and Services
I've developed specific skills over the course of my product management career. Although product management is a highly generalized career where capabilities needed vary wildly, I believe there are a collection of specific skills and expertise that are valuable in every product role.
Below are examples of the skills I've practiced and developed as a product manager. If you'd like to learn more, don't hesitate to reach out to learn more about what I can do as a product manager.
EXAMPLE SOLUTIONS TO COMMON PRODUCT PROBLEMS
Product Execution
Prioritization
Optimizing Product Development Lifecycle
Setting OKR's and Goals
Requirements and User Experience Design
Product Strategy
Aligning strategy
Maintaining a roadmap
Customer interviews and Market analysis
Product Team
Establish PM level criteria and job ladders
Design organizational team structure and roles
Domain Expertise
Advertising Tech
FinTech
Mobile Growth Strategies
AB Testing and Experimentation Design
Machine Learning / AI
This is a subset of the skills I offer, reach out to hear more.