About Me
Alexander Schwertner
Product Leadership Advisor and Mentor
Alexander is a seasoned product leader and strategy advisor with 18 years of entrepreneurial experience in tech startups in Canada and Germany across various industries.
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He has introduced new products from conception to launch, hired and mentored world-class product teams, and has navigated numerous organizations through growth, strategy pivots, and mergers. Alexander has worked directly with numerous CEOs and Boards to drive strategy and growth of their organizations.
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Alex went through the typical startup challenges and growing pains from the inside, and can share a broad range of experience from shaping high-level product strategy to setting up agile development processes or coaching junior product managers.
Experience
2022
ActivateStaff.com
VP Product
ActivateStaff is a B2B SaaS startup in the staffing space, creating the mobile candidate experience for the workforce of the Gig Economy. Recruited by the CEO to develop a product strategy and transition from customer-driven to product-driven development.
2021 - 2022
Crowdriff
VP Product
CrowdRiff offers MarTech SaaS solutions for travel destination marketers to source and utilize user generated content (UGC) to attract and engage travellers. Recruited by founding CEO as the first product leader of the company with a mission to shift from a sales-led to a product-led organization. Built a product and design team to support four product lines and launch a mobile creator marketplace.
2019 - 2021
500px
VP Product
500px is a photography and licensing platform with 17 million users worldwide. Recruited by CEO to support scale up phase of the product brand under new ownership after an acquisition. Reimagined the product experience and value propositions to drive product-led growth of a freemium subscription business.
2011 - 2018
Tucows.com
VP Product
Managed the leading wholesale domain name, SSL and email platform, generating USD 200M in revenue. Led a collaborative team of over 50 product managers, UX designers and engineers across four locations.
2004 - 2018
EPAG Domainservices GmbH
General Manager
Managed a successful turnaround of a boutique domain name registrar in Germany with EUR 5 million in annual revenue, ultimately facilitated their acquisition by Tucows.com in 2011.