Richard A.

About Me

Richard is an experienced product manager and entrepreneur. Since 2009, he's successfully bootstrapped multiple enterprises, SaaS web and Windows solutions, and mobile applications. He's also led and consulted more than eight tech startups from idea to launch. Richard's strengths are design thinking, customer experiments, crisis management, product strategy, and managing teams of designers, developers, and marketers.

Other

Work history

Varda AG
Agile Product Manager
2021 - Present (4 years)
, Remote
  • Helped the stakeholders, through multiple workshops, to align on a product vision for the Field Stories product.

  • Introduced changes to the existing team and helped them adopt Agile Scrum methodologies. Trained the team on Scrum best practices and helped the company adopt a product versus project approach.

  • Met with potential customers/early adopters to introduce our product vision and get their feedback on our prototypes, the problems they are facing, and the potential solutions for those problems.

  • Created a product roadmap that included a prototype, MVP, and post-MVP tasks.

  • Aligned with other products to clear dependencies and synchronize our roadmaps.

  • Designed the product's end-to-end business flows and managed the user experience and interface design.

  • Managed development sprints as a product owner and ensured the development team's work was aligned and progressing towards the product vision.

  • Kept stakeholders aligned with the product vision and set a proper validation process with the right customer segments.

Undisclosed Company
Managing Partner
2019 - 2020 (1 year)
, Remote
  • Helped the company overcome its current financial crisis and set a fundraising plan.

  • Supervised a team of 22 employees, including developers, scrum masters, product owners, and maintenance managers.

  • Managed client relationships with the company as well as the sales team operations.

  • Implemented the Agile and Scrum methodology in the company, coached the employees on its application, and restructured the employees and the projects based on Scrum.

  • Managed the proposals and deals of the company from client negotiations, business, and technical requirements until project deliveries.

  • Conducted weekly manager meetings and monthly partner meetings.

  • Set a business development plan with the holding subsidiary companies on processes and procedures when dealing with the company.

  • Led critical projects with clients that used to have a bad experience with the company.

  • Directed the development and maintenance queue of the company to make sure that Scrum Best Practices were implemented.

  • Helped entrepreneurs in their ideation process, market study, and execution of their startups until launching an MVP or a full product.

Purple Brains
Founder | Managing Director
2011 - Present (14 years)
, Remote
  • Contacted international software sellers and negotiated reseller agreements on behalf of the company for Lebanon and the GCC market.

  • Managed clients' IT infrastructure and enterprise systems.

  • Advised and managed companies' IT projects. Consulted startups from ideation to launch and growth hacking.

  • Built custom SaaS products for the healthcare, Pharma, insurance, and Enterprise institutions for the local market.

  • Consulted healthcare institutions, from small polyclinics to university hospitals, and built appropriate healthcare solutions for them.

  • Established and executed company marketing and sales plans for our own products and supplier's products.

  • Came up with IT startup ideas and researched the market for validation. Raised investment for the company and client startups.

  • Oversaw outsourced development and creative team to execute company and client projects.

  • Prepared quotations and legal contracts for customers and negotiated with them for signature.

  • Coached and mentored startups in the early stages. Implemented three startups for the company from ideation to launch. One is still in the market today and another exited after 11 months.

Contracom International
MENA Sales Manager and Partner
2011 - 2016 (5 years)
, Remote
  • Managed communication with the US supplier for SCADA products.

  • Recruited and appointed resellers in the MENA region.

  • Launched the products in the market and traveled for demonstrations all over the MENA region.

  • Helped the resellers study their markets and set up a sales and marketing plan.

  • Managed the relationship between the resellers and Contracom.

  • Assisted resellers in large sales deals and helped them survey the clients' locations.

  • Supervised maintenance and spare parts availability for resellers all over the MENA region.

  • Assisted the US company in product development and enhancements.

  • Assigned key performance indicators to the resellers and made sure they kept them.

Benta SAL
MIS Manager
2009 - 2011 (2 years)
, Remote
  • Managed and maintained the existing ERP and sales systems and was in charge of the supplier's communications.

  • Supervised the purchase and implementation of a GPS surveillance system for the sales team.

  • Designed and implemented a new pharma CRM with an Indian-based company.

  • Managed the RFPs for hardware purchases, including and not limited to PCs, servers, networking components, and mobile phones.

  • Researched and tested HRM systems in the market in order to choose the proper one for Benta SAL.

  • Researched all the business and technical requirements for custom enterprise and healthcare solutions and outsourced the development to remote teams in India.

Contracom International
Project Manager
2008 - 2009 (1 year)
, Remote
  • Built a reporting system for the Lebanese water establishment telemetry system.

  • Managed the communication between Contracom, the water establishment officials, and the other independent contractors.

  • Oversaw the maintenance requests of the telemetry system errors and breakdowns and assigned them to various contractors.

  • Set day-to-day procedures and a contingency plan in case of breakdowns.

  • Performed a system analysis of the current telemetry system and enhancement suggestions.

Park Tower Suites Hotel
Receptionist | Operations Manager | Shift Leader
2004 - 2008 (4 years)
, Remote
  • Managed the front desk during the PM and night shifts.

  • Assisted guests in their day-to-day requests during my shifts.

  • Directed restaurant and housekeeping operations through the team managers.

  • Supervised the billing, check-in, and check-out of guests.

  • Oversaw the team's IT requests and served as the contact person with the IT servicing company to speed up the process.

American Life Insurance Company
Sales Agent
2003 - 2004 (1 year)
, Remote
  • Conducted sales meetings with potential customers.

  • Prepared sales presentations for ALICO products.

  • Assisted other sales agents during their large sales deals.

Yara
Agile Product Manager
Present (2025 years)
, Remote
  • Collaborated with two different teams from Yara management on two different products to help them ideate and create the product vision.

  • Helped and mediated the team to go through the Lean Canvas and fill it in to empathize with the potential users.

  • Interviewed internal agronomists from Yara and helped the UX designers and the external agency build an estimated journey as is.

  • Managed UX designers and an external agency to conduct user research to validate the market needs.

  • Helped the Yara managers to interpret the results of the market/user research and ideate based on that.

  • Worked with UX and UI designers to build prototypes and managed external agencies with the prototype testing with potential users.

  • Did a market competition analysis to highlight existing competitors, their market shares, and what would be our products' competitive edge on them.

  • Learned a lot about the FErtilizer and the AG business, especially in the fields of fertigation, grass, and dairy farming.

  • Introduced a new approach at Yara consisting of using existing market players and embedding their technologies in their products using APIs.

Fortune 500 Company
Business Analyst
Present (2025 years)
, Remote
  • Created a questionnaire with more than 250 questions filled by users in 14 different markets in Asia, Africa, and South America.

  • Analyzed the questionnaire findings and created a report for all the findings related to the business requirements of each market, the common needs across markets, the exceptions and specific needs of each market, and a subjective assessment.

  • Created the list of processes needed with a heat map of the markets that use those processes with a scoring system to allow IT to prioritize.

  • Created user stories for each process, adding the story, description, and acceptance criteria.

  • Built process flows for optimized user experience covering all the market's exceptions.

  • Suggested the MVP needed features based on the common features across markets and the rollout order for markets.

  • Presented my findings to the business and IT teams and defended them using the proof I gathered from the markets.

Showcase

Lebanese Water Establishment Telemetry Reporting System
  • Replaced the original Lebanon water telemetry reporting system which was primarily based on Microsoft Excel, with a newly designed SaaS product reporting system

  • Handled the integration and implementation of the SaaS product reporting system

  • Conducted training sessions for the establishment team on how to configure and generate reports using the new system

Pharma Sales CRM
  • I managed the entire implementation of the Pharma CRM from scratch, starting from the analysis phase to the technical proposal preparation.

  • Led a remote developer team through the implementation phase, successfully launching the system's first phase in six months and the second phase in three months.

  • Handled the system's full deployment, managed training, prepared complete documentation, and assigned a maintenance team to ensure continued operation.

DOCISS EMR Solution
  • Founded Purple Brains and developed an electronic medical record and clinic management solution, DOCISS EMR Solution.

  • Performed a project analysis with three specialties doctors, designed the user journey, recruited a UX/UI developer and a team of developers to finalize the design and launch product.

  • Built a business model, sales plan and successfully launched DOCISS in the Lebanese market, which was used by over 100 doctors and had more than 20,000 records within a year.

Monica PRM
  • Monica PRM started as a networking idea in 2016 with an intention to better connect attendees at large events via an AI-enabled app.

  • The project evolved from an event-specific solution to a broader networking assistant, offering users reminders and details of their networking connections and follow-ups.

  • The launch of Monica PRM, now a chatbot assistant available on its own app and Facebook Messenger, was delayed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fetch My Ride
  • Fetch My Ride, a valet parking platform serving valet parking companies and car owners, was conceptualized and validated in 2017

  • The go-live version was deployed in June 2018 and experienced rapid user growth

  • 11 months post-launch, a multinational valet parking company acquired Fetch My Ride

ERP Implementation
  • Switch Group, a medium-sized facility management company in the GCC, hired the developer for ERP selection and integration of a custom maintenance and facility management module.

  • The customization and implementation processes were conducted simultaneously.

  • The whole project, from commencement to launch, spanned approximately 14 months.

Kanoony Platform
  • Kanoony is a UAE-based legal platform featuring a vast library of legal documents.

  • The platform offers language specification, online editing, purchasing options as well as electronic submission and signature capabilities via DocuSign.

  • Users can also engage with signees for getting comments on the purchased documents.

Education

Education
Bachelor of Science Degree in Management Information System
American University of Science and Technology
2004 - 2009 (5 years)