Twenty-six years beside people who are not technical

Mandate

Make the service usable and affordable for firms without technical staff, with pricing, privacy design and automated features added to the product remit.

Outcomes

• Introduced the Micro plan; conversion among firms under ten staff rose from 11 to 19 per cent
• Launched supplier bank-detail warnings; customers confirmed 61 fraud attempts in the first year
• Released an alert assistant limited to fourteen alert types after a graded error review
• Raised 24-hour acknowledgement for covered alert types from 34 to 52 per cent

Decisions in context

My appointment as chief product officer joined two things that had been managed separately: what the product says to customers and what customers pay for it. Pricing, partner experience and privacy design moved into my remit, and automated features followed in 2024. I lead product managers, designers, researchers and the writers who own every alert message. Engineering reports to the chief technology officer and the alert desk to the chief operating officer, so most of my decisions are shared ones. I write a short paper for each significant choice and present the larger ones to the board. All three decisions described under Impact were taken in this role, and each involved a colleague or investor with a credible opposing view, and each cost the company something measurable. I attend board meetings to present, not as a director.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first non-executive role alongside it, with consent.

Mandate

Make a detection service designed for technical buyers usable by owners and office managers.

Outcomes

• Rewrote 140 alert messages around a single recommended action
• Rebuilt the owner dashboard around three choices: fix, forward to the IT partner or dismiss
• Prepared the product, pricing and partner console for the Irish launch in 2019

Decisions in context

The founders had built detection that impressed technical buyers and confused almost everyone else. I spent much of my first year beside owners and office managers as alerts arrived, noting what they did next. Often they did nothing, because the message assumed vocabulary they had never needed. My team rewrote the alert library, and I insisted that every message name one recommended action. We rebuilt the owner dashboard around three choices and gave IT partners a console showing every customer they supported. In 2019 I led the product work for our Irish launch, including English-language content and partner terms. The period taught me that a security company's writing is part of its product. It also showed me how much of our revenue depended on IT partners whose incentives were close to ours but never identical.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief product officer when pricing and privacy design joined the product remit.

Mandate

Make rota and shift-swap tools work for store and kitchen staff using their own phones.

Outcomes

• Cut the mobile app's data use by about 70 per cent for staff on prepaid plans
• Introduced shift-swap approvals that store managers could complete in under a minute
• Moved pricing from per store to per active employee after chains objected to paying for seasonal staff

Decisions in context

Turnalde gave me my first head-of-product role and my first experience of a buyer who was not the user. Head offices of retail and restaurant chains bought the service; shop assistants and kitchen staff used it on their own phones, often on prepaid data. I spent early weeks in stores and kitchens watching staff check rotas during breaks. We reduced the app's data use, simplified shift swaps and gave store managers approvals they could complete between customers. Pricing became my problem when two chains objected to paying for seasonal staff who had left. I recommended per-active-employee pricing, which the chief executive accepted. I left because Calvessin's founders offered a product in which a confusing screen could cost a small firm its savings, not just a missed shift. That higher stake was what I wanted to work on.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Calvessin's founders to lead small-business product where mistakes carried higher costs.

Mandate

Improve the reliability and reseller adoption of the small-office backup appliance.

Outcomes

• Introduced a monthly automatic restore test on every appliance
• Found failing backup jobs on about one appliance in twelve during the first quarter
• Built a reseller view showing failed tests across each partner's customers

Decisions in context

At Brivastel I moved from recommending changes to deciding them. The appliance sold well through resellers, but it reported success whenever a backup job finished, not when the data could be recovered. Remembering the blank tapes in Coimbra, I proposed a monthly restore test that opened a random file from each backup. Sales colleagues feared that visible failures would damage confidence. They did, for a while, because roughly one appliance in twelve failed in the first quarter. Most failures were configuration errors that resellers could correct once they saw them, so we built a view showing failed tests across each reseller's customers. From 2011 I led three product managers across the appliance and cloud lines. The role taught me that an honest signal can be commercially uncomfortable for a season and still be the right product decision.

Reason for the move

Moved to Madrid for a first head-of-product role with pricing and team responsibility.

Mandate

Plan and run usability studies for public-service websites, insurers and utilities.

Outcomes

• Ran more than 90 moderated usability studies
• Added disabled participants to the consultancy's standard recruitment
• Wrote the studio's guidance on reporting accessibility failures to clients

Decisions in context

Caravelim taught me to watch before concluding. I planned and moderated studies for public-service websites, insurers and utilities, and from 2007 I led small study teams. The session that shaped my later work involved a blind participant who could not reach a form's error messages with her screen reader. The client treated it as an exception. I argued, with the research director's support, that disabled participants belonged in every standard study, and the consultancy adopted that practice. I also wrote its guidance on reporting accessibility failures as defects of the service. The limit of the role was authority: clients could accept or ignore our findings, and several ignored them. I left to work somewhere I would own the product decision and live with its consequences, rather than describe them in a report and move on.

Reason for the move

Wanted to decide product changes rather than recommend them.

Mandate

Install, maintain and support networks, backups and desktop systems for small offices.

Outcomes

• Reduced repeat call-outs by writing one-page guides for customers' staff
• Introduced quarterly restore checks after a dental practice lost its bookings
• Trained two junior technicians who later led the team

Decisions in context

I joined Rendalva straight from my degree and spent four years in other people's offices. Our customers were dentists, notaries, accountants and family workshops, none with technical staff. I installed networks, replaced failing disks and answered the same questions many times. The dental practice that lost its bookings in 2001 changed how I worked: afterwards, our team tested restores every quarter for customers on support contracts. I also began writing one-page guides for receptionists and office managers, and repeat call-outs fell. From 2002 I led six technicians. The job showed me that small firms rarely lacked ability. They lacked time and explanations written for them. I moved to Lisbon because I wanted to understand why software produced those confusing moments, in the first place, rather than keep arriving afterwards with a screwdriver to repair them.

Reason for the move

Moved to Lisbon to work on how software is designed rather than repair the results.