that had to actually work
Past roles, present judgment. Head of Product today, with a commercial path behind me — CCO, CMO, Head of Marketing — and 7 years inside hotels on the operator side before that. Front desk → marketing → digital → analytics → commercial → product. Each function gave me a different vantage on the same business, so I keep sales, partner channel, P&L and positioning in the same frame. The point isn't the list of titles — it's that I can make product decisions on my own against 15 years of cross-functional context, without needing weeks of context-setting before I can make useful decisions.
Processes before patches. Most teams don't have an AI problem — they have a workflow problem. Workflow first, then the system around it, then AI on top. You can build that slowly and painfully, fast without the pain, or from scratch on top of 15 years of mistakes I've already made so you don't have to. Reusable and auditable processes, transparent logic over clever-but-undocumented ideas, iterative over heroic — with a feedback loop wired in so the system keeps learning and adapting through constantly changing conditions. That's the layer I build.
Owning the outcome. I came into fractional work because the model fits how I already operate — and right now it fits the market too. Teams are restructuring fast, full-time senior hires are a heavy bet, and a fractional lead often unblocks more than another full-time hire would. Not the cheapest way to close a product task — what you actually buy is responsibility for the decision, taken against 15 years of solid cross-functional context. I'd rather own the outcome than rent out the hours. Startups and growth-stage teams are the sweet spot — the messy, ambitious phase where there's real velocity to build with. That's the stage that drives me.
your situation here —
let's talk
on top of the workflow
& admin systems
orchestration layer
& MARKETS
DISCOVERY
ARCHITECTURE
& ADMIN SYSTEMS
PRODUCT LOGIC
& DATA
five ways to bring me in
Open to conversations when there's a validated problem, a clear market contour, a defined role split, and a real need to build the product and operational function from scratch. Not a default offer — by conversation only.
not just the backlog
The context. B2B wholesale OTA based in the UAE, connecting travel agencies across GCC, CIS, Europe and LatAm to global hotel inventory. When I joined, the platform existed — but the product layer didn't. Three pieces were entangled with no clear ownership.
What I owned. I split the platform into three product verticals — Agency App, Admin Panel, API Layer — and rebuilt the product logic behind each. The shift that mattered most internally wasn't a feature; it was a workflow rework that raised delivery throughput by ~70%. YouTrack taxonomy, +3 sprint horizon, retros that closed. On top of that I built a flexible quarterly-priority system — business priorities can shift mid-quarter, and the team absorbs the change without whiplash.
The engine side. Connected inventory across suppliers, retail and API agencies. Built markup, fee and restriction logic for both client and supplier sides. A supplier-settings module by tariff and feature type that reduced API load from low-margin clients. Finance layer with VCC, acquiring, credit-limit logic and Zoho integration for tax invoices across international markets. An anomaly Telegram bot so distribution issues surfaced in minutes, not after agency complaints.
The context. SaaS PMS and channel manager for 16,000+ hotels. Joined March 2020, just as the hotel category froze. Stayed long enough to see it recover past pre-crisis.
Anti-crisis first 6 months. Repositioning, pricing redesign, customer-success workflow, full chain rebrand, event channel that replaced cold outbound. 20+ webinars on yield, channel mix and recovery — education became the main lead source. CPL −40%, monthly leads +121%, 6,000+ event participants.
Commercial expansion. ABCDX segmentation, separate bizdev for the X-segment (largest properties, custom needs). Reached Booking.com and Airbnb Preferred Partner status. Launched the first channel-manager integration with Yandex Travel.
Public-sector work. Led the B2G project with the Russian Ministry of Digital Development for small & mid-business support — Bnovo was in the first ten companies accepted, and the only HotelTech vendor at launch.
not just the hours
B2B creator-ops product for organic-traffic UGC. Came in as fractional Product Owner with no existing dev team — and built the admin panel and moderation module end-to-end using an AI-assisted build workflow.
Stack: Django + PostgreSQL backend, Lovable frontend, Claude as the build co-pilot. Structured provider onboarding, normalized internal schema, status mapping, async processing, deterministic auto-moderation with full audit trail.
The choice that mattered most: keeping the moderation layer deterministic and auditable, not handing it to a model. Ops teams need to defend decisions to creators and clients — they need a rule trace, not a probability score. AI moves up the stack later, on top of clean, normalized data.
The Gaming Intelligence direction we tried inside this product didn't land — see Fails.
YouTravel.me — a tour-operator platform, primarily direct-to-consumer. The opportunity: launch the B2B model for travel agencies. Brought in as fractional bizdev to drive the launch from go-to-market side.
Heavy customer-development with travel agencies — what does the agency workflow look like, what's broken in current B2B platforms, what commission model and inventory access matter. Translated that into agency typology, tier structure and commercial terms. Onboarded the first 10 distribution agencies as the launch foundation.
Scale-up after handover ran slower than the design supported — that lesson is in Fails.
Revenue management SaaS for hotels — a category I knew from the operator side. Had evaluated similar tools in previous roles, so I entered already knowing the real use cases and common objections.
Strict sequence: ABCDX segmentation first (who pays for what, who churns and why); then tariff grid rebuilt around segments, not features; then marketing matching the segments that converted fastest. Pricing without segmentation produces tariffs that look clean but don't convert — we didn't repeat that mistake.
HoReCa Training runs professional development programs for hospitality professionals. Strong curriculum, weak commercial packaging — the average purchase didn't reflect the career-level transformation the programs delivered.
As Marketing / Business Consultant: tariff redesign, product-selection adjustments, commercial relaunch, partner-marketing strategy. +47% average purchase value from positioning and partner work, not ad spend.
Beyond the commercial side, launched two new B2B product lines for hotel operators: OKR implementation for hotels and a staff motivation-system service.
The failed bets and what they taught me
Built a working market-intelligence MVP solo in 4 weeks — but no buyer, no validation, tool instead of offer. Conserved the project, kept the lesson.
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Launched the B2B model, onboarded first 10 agencies. The model worked — but onboarding speed capped scale, and I didn't flag it as a Day-1 spec. The team hit the same wall after handover. Lesson now built into how I scope B2B launches.
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who've seen my work from the inside
Contact details are not listed publicly — references are shared directly during the hiring conversation.