Mark V. Smetanin

Unlock Success for Airbnb and Short-Term Rental Business. Recently by Improving the Product - Increased Engagement by 42% , conversion rate by 74%, and acquired 2.5M new users.

As a product management leader with over eight years of experience in payments, e-commerce, Airbnb business, property management, I am a fan of technology and its application to drive business growth.My expertise lies in product management, agile coaching, portfolio management, and strategic planning.I have experience in increasing user engagement, optimizing technical processes and leading high-performance teams.

Key Highlights:

Director of Product Management: Enhanced user engagement by 16% and improved product value description by 14% through strategic market research and collaboration.

Senior Product Portfolio Manager: Managed a $1.2M project, leading to an $8M revenue projection and a 17% increase in Net Promoter Score. 
Risk assessment methods were applied, which reduced project disruptions by 24%.

Head of Product Strategy: Increased customer engagement by 42%, improved conversion rates by 74%, and acquired 2.5M new users—reduced marketing expenses by 28% by addressing critical pain points.

Skills and Expertise:

Product Management/Product Owner: Agile Frameworks, Scrum, Kanban, SAFe
Technical Proficiency: Jira, Asana, Hubspot, Salesforce
Industry Expertise: Fintech, E-commerce, Property Management, Vacation Rentals
Certifications: PMI-ACP, PMI-PMP, CSM, CSPO

Professional Experience:

Nine years in product management, agile transformation, and strategic planning
I have experience in leading cross-functional teams to deliver high performance products.
Skilled in negotiating and managing key partnerships and stakeholders

Interests:

The God's Flow State, Coffee, Stand-up comedy, Kite surfing, Skiing, Music, martial arts (2 black belts), Reading, and Hiking.

Technology Stack:

Jira, Jira Service Desk, Hubspot, Asana, Zoho Projects, Microsoft Project, Basecamp, ClickUp, Todoist, PipelineCRM, Freedcamp, Hive, Monday, Trello, Time tracker, Pivotal Tracker, Slack,Excel, Powerpoint, MS Sharepoint, MS Visio, MS Project, MS Access, Prezzi, Numbers, Pages, Photoshop, Lightroom, Planview, Linux, FreeBSD, Quality Center, ZohoCRM, ZenDesk, Zoho Desk, Fresh Desk, Vivantio Help Desk, FreshService, Salesforce Service Cloud, Hootsuite, WordPress, HTML, CSS, OBS, Mindmaps, Focus Matrix, Dropbox Paper, Skitch, Insightly CRM, Payment Gates (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Square, Braintree, Stripe, Paypal, Authorize.net, 2checkout, Payoneer, Bitpay, Shopify Payments), Google Analytics, Google Search Tool, Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, MCP, Rentals United, Avirato, Expedia, Booking.com, Airbnb, VRBO, PMS, Glovebox, Coterie, Risk Advisor, AWS, Crowe CRM, Salesforc

Lead Product Manager / Product Owner / Consultant

•     Improved a Product using a customer journey map, understanding and prioritizing the most critical pain points in the most profitable segment. Provided clear concept and design strategy. Collaborated with Dev and UX teams. Increased customer engagement by 226%, Improved conversion rate by 74%, and acquired 2.5M, new users.

•     Planned and facilitated an extraordinary spike for (AI) Artificial Intelligence tools and prompts. Fixed and resolved seven major issues when team members just felt stuck. 

•     Raised team confidence after the last check-in. Positive emotions and gratitude are on our happiness radar. The current sprint is 100% happiness VS 78% at the previous sprint. 

•     Organized the most efficient communication with stakeholders and implemented advanced product backlog refinement, reducing the backlog by 16%.

•    Stepped forward with special coaching from our Unique Coach and very advanced Scum Master. Differentiated workflow steps, business rule variations, variations in data, and interface variations, polished and deepened INVEST criteria. Dramatically improved the slicing of our vertical stories. Delivered value ~20% faster with the smallest increments to our customers. 

•   Implemented automated test script, additional smoke test after the build is released to QA, and code review by peers. Armed new Definition of Done (DOD) for our dev team. Changed Sprint Planning Agenda. Raised team confidence level in delivering the sprint goals to 94%. 

•    Implemented automated test script and code review by peers. Armed new Definition of Done (DOD) for our dev team. 

•     Collected the data via Web-tracking and customer interviews,  tested and validated assumptions with the development team. Provided much precise anatomy of personas. Redesigned current marketing campaign reducing waist by 28%

Spikes:
Sustainable and environmentally conscious business practices
Enterprise Agile: Changing your culture

Pepino Technologies Pvt Ltd

•	Managed cross-functional team and stakeholder communication, and oversaw product development from inception to delivery.
•	Gathered critical information from meetings with various stakeholders (internal and external) and prioritized the product backlogs to maximize value and thus, enhanced productivity.
•	Monitored deliverables and ensured timely completion of projects which resulted in cost savings. 
•	Contributed to the organization in its business development and market penetration.
•	Coached team members to understand the Agile Principles.
•	Facilitated sprint planning, backlog grooming, daily standups, and retrospective meetings.
•	Facilitated collaboration, discussion, conflict resolution, and decision-making within the team and guided them in delivering value.
•	Contributed in budget management for the undertaken projects.

Product Manager

Canny

Product | Content | Marketing

Canny is a marketing content platform built specifically for small and medium sized interior design business owners.

•	Spearheaded the development of content with my impactful written communication and in marketing planning, and strategy through market research, customer segmentation, creating buyer personas, and developing user stories.
•	Contributed to boosting website performance and engagement metrics, such as website traffic, bounce rates, conversion rates, and search engine rankings by using tools such as Google Analytics and SEMrush.
•	Demonstrated knowledge of UX principles and contributed to optimizing the website for the best user experience (UX), by conducting user research, user testing, and analyzing user feedback to improve website usability and functionality

Product Consultant

Insights Active Learning(Insights IAS)

Mentoring, Guiding and teaching UPSC Civil service aspirants as per the individual suited approach and strategies to crack the competitive UPSC civil service examination.

Mindset coach relevant for UPSC civil service exam preparation.

Education Mentor

Alternative Learning Systems

Agro foods overseas

Co-Founder

Trisul Industrial Corporation (Graco Inc) 

• Transformed the complete sales process which was inefficient in its approach, by training and polishing the 
sales skills of the sales team on the industrial goods and equipment vertical of GRACO and by leading the 
strategic business development initiatives which were customized as per the targeted segment of customers.
• Led a slew of strategic and tactical initiatives like attending industrial meets, giving competitive demos, training 
programs, cold calling campaigns, email campaigns, leveraging social media platforms for awareness campaigns,
customized service and maintenance programs, loyalty programs, referral programs, and customer support 
initiatives.
• My leadership and my above-mentioned initiatives resulted in increased customer acquisition by 350%, 
significantly increased market penetration and presence, increased revenue by 30%, and further reduced CAC
through enhanced retention and referrals.


Led and upgraded a team of sales executives by guiding them to achieve ambitious business goals/OKRs and polishing individual skillsets based on their professional goals, strengths.

Business Development Manager

Multi Engineering Services (Graco Inc)

Contributed and assisted in developing project designs, business strategies as per the needs and demands of automobile OEMs, along with sales negotiations, bidding process and resolving clients issues. 

Upselling and cross selling while maintaining cordial professional relationship with existing client base and expanding client base

Assistant Sales Manager

Eros Elevators & Escalators Private Limited

Contributed to the organization in pitching their products, sales follow ups, completion of sales cycle, exploring new market segments with my convincing sales skills and design ideas.

Senior Sales Engineer

Product Management || Business Analysis || Entrepreneurship || Vipassana Meditation || AGILE || UPSC || Investment & Trading || Business Development || Stakeholder Management || Project Management

Praveen Mane is an energetic and entrepreneurial-minded leader with over 12 years of reliable experiential knowledge and understanding of stakeholders' mindsets and business processes. He seeks to contribute by bringing positive transformation in people's lives through an organization he is associated with; through his good Emotional Intelligence, impactful communication, ownership attitude, proactiveness, good business acumen, impactful stakeholder management, data-driven, critical and analytical thinking and solution/outcome-oriented approach.

He cherishes being an avid lifetime learner with ever on intellectual curiosity, applying and sharing his knowledge with his team/stakeholders and building the products and solutions being a sensible leader. He doesn't hesitate to take calculated risks to pivot the business in surfing through business turbulence/uncertainties.

He reveres ''LIFE throbbing in each living being'' and hence nurtures his own life by - playing sports (especially Football), inculcating and establishing a meditative mind through Vipassana meditation (as taught by S.N.Goenka ji), kriya yoga and hatha yoga (as taught by Isha Foundation), fitness activities like running/jogging, body weight exercises, reading life-deepening books, listening to enthralling music, singing, dancing, dramatics, volunteering in the environment, social and spiritual causes, also through cherishing the bounty of mother earth in his adventure treks and trips while experiencing, exploring the mother nature and LIFE in its ESSENCE.

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The Battle

Mark V. Smetanin

Praveen Mane

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