Product Manager

Lepaya develops innovative and personalized learning solutions that make corporate trainings more impactful and more engaging. The startup is in a very strong position: the platform works, the proposition is validated in the market and the current clients are excited. Now Lepaya is gearing up for growth. The Product Manager builds out the platform to offer even better user experience and to match the rapid scaling of the business.

ABOUT LEPAYA

Lepaya was founded by Peter Kuperus and René Janssen in 2017. Peter and René worked together at BCG and have both held leadership positions at companies like Lazada, TravelBird and Rocket Internet. They witnessed first-hand that the market for corporate trainings has not seen any significant innovation in decades, and that especially young professionals and young leaders don’t have the tools they need to optimally develop themselves.

While the current offline training offerings are mostly expensive, time consuming and focused on getting to know yourself better, professionals actually need help developing practical skills in ways that are short and snappy. Skills like facilitating meetings, time management and effective communication.

‘Online’ may sound modern and young, but that doesn’t mean that current online trainings actually are. These solutions generally provide access to lecture recordings and long theoretical modules. Users have to browse through them on their own to find relevant content. That doesn’t fit the way new generations want to learn (or live).

INNOVATIVE TRAINING PLATFORM

That’s why Lepaya developed a training platform that fully fits 2019: online where possible and face-to-face where face-to-face really adds value. With facilitators who help learners in short sessions to develop practical skills. Skills that can directly be applied in to-the-point video instructions, focused articles and short assignments, all accessible on a smartphone anywhere and anytime.

“A lot of training organizations are led by education experts. Our strong business background gives us a much better understanding of the skills professionals actually need. But that doesn’t mean we don’t develop trainings that aren’t educationally sound. We just see theory as a means to an end, not as a starting point.” – Peter Kuperus, co-founder

The strength of Lepaya is the effective and inspiring way the company combines online with offline. Lepaya makes learning measurable. With its digital training modules the company gathers extensive data – e.g. about when users are active and how long they spend on specific elements – and combines those with qualitative feedback and the latest in educational science. That’s how Lepaya continuously improves its product.

PROMISING STARTUP IN A BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY

Last year showed the potential of Lepaya’s proposition: its first clients, amongst which for example bol.com and scaleups like picnic and bloomon, are very excited. That’s also because Lepaya makes learning very practical. The company can clearly explain what employees do better after a training than before. A unique approach in the world of corporate trainings.

2019 is going to be a crucial year for Lepaya. The company aims to become a stable force in the Netherlands, with a set of large clients and a strong brand name. Lepaya also plans to expand internationally. The yearly global spend on corporate trainings is about 200 billion dollars. The majority is serviced by local and traditional players. There is no reason why Lepaya – with a good sense of market needs, expertise in education and a technically strong platform – can’t become an international success.

VACANCY: PRODUCT MANAGER

The tech team currently consists of Ahmed Omar (CTO), five developers and a full time designer, regularly supplemented with interns. Now that Lepaya is doubling down on growth, they’re hiring a Product Manager. He/she will report to Ahmed and manage the design team.

The Product Manager gets the opportunity to shape the product (how it looks and how it works), in a setting with a lot of responsibility and freedom. He/she owns product development and UX research – e.g. validating user stories and product strategies, and creating the product roadmap – allowing Ahmed to focus on longer term product vision and tech strategy.

FULL OWNERSHIP OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

The Product Manager translates high-level improvement ideas to user stories and features. He/she draws inspiration from user feedback (qualitative and quantitative), data analyses, concepts in other platforms and industries, and creative ideas from the team.

The Product Manager has full ownership of the development process: from detailing the specifics, to user testing, running experiments, discussing the results with clients and structuring the feedback. He/she works closely with the developers, helping them to get to the right features. The Product Manager also creates the prioritized product roadmap, in which the impact on user engagement is one of the key factors.

WORKING CLOSELY WITH CTO, TECH TEAMS AND CLIENTS

Giving the nature of Lepaya’s product, the Product Manager needs to understand how to change behavior; for example when designing the optimal form of a reward system. Based on e.g. UX research and analyses on user preferences, the Product Manager develops the concept. Next, he/she drafts the product requirement documents and the approach to testing. When the dev team delivers the MVPs, the Product Manager tests those with users to identify further improvements.

The Product Manager actively participates in daily standups and weekly sprint planning and progress meetings. He/she also works with clients to understand their needs and translate those into stories that flow into the roadmap.

“Our Product Manager should be someone who really cares. They need to have the drive to make a difference for our users. That’s also the beauty of working at Lepaya: you get the opportunity to work highly independent and really make an impact. For our clients but also with our clients. Because we’re looking to expand rapidly, the Product Manager gets the opportunity to build out his/her team and grow towards a key position in the future organization.” – Ahmed Omar, CTO

 Candidateprofile

EXPERIENCE

• Experience in Product Management (e.g. roadmap planning, A/B testing, UX research and market research)
• Experience in working with technical teams
• Dutch speaking is a plus

PERSONALITY

• Committed
• Data-driven
• Analytical
• Not afraid to speak up
• Self-reliant
• Adaptive
• Eager to learn