Elena Hagege

Responding to incoming network-powered demand to assist early-stage startups in their AI-related Product work.

• + Product ops. Draft a large volume of tickets, clean Jira, reorganize specifications for the Dev and QA team in an exceptionally short time frame.
  • Mission: Rapidly restructure Jira backlog and product specs to unblock a development team stalled by documentation debt.
  • Actions: Wrote 40+ tickets from scratch; reorganized programs, epics and user stories; standardized spec format compatible with AI coding tools; updated and cleaned jira tickets, cleaned outdated backlog; set up QA checklist templates, wireframes checklist template, and PRD ticket framework.
  • Impact: Dev team unblocked. What was in the founder's mind is now written, no more bottle neck on them. Edge scenarios and missing requirements have been spotted and addressed before the dev team needed the information.
  • Tools: ChatGPT for simple rephrase, and to challenge the completion of the first template-tickets. Once the first core tickets done, I "discussed" the desired features with Claude Code, which scaled the process and produced the tickets. I verified them with Claude code, Claude, Chat GPT and manually.
  • Note: at the time of this mission, I did not trust AI enought to no verify all the tickets manually. The mission was executed faster with AI then if I had to do it all manually, but end-to-end the time difference was not huge. However, the process in place enables the company to scale easily, in an effective way, with little Product resources (probably one senior PM only).
  • ELENA TO COMPLETE THIS MISSION
  • MSIE Connect legacy Portfolio
• + Product Audit. Assess the logic and solidity of a company's product process, remove blockers, and prepare the team to introduce AI.
  • Mission: Diagnose and rebuild a startup's product process ahead of an AI transformation initiative.
  • Actions: Interviewed PMs and engineering leads; mapped the release pipeline; identified [N] critical blockers; delivered written audit with prioritized action plan in 2 weeks.
  • Impact: Release cycle shortened by [N]%; team ready to onboard AI coding tools within the following sprint.
  • Tools: Miro, Notion, Claude
  • Note: Process audits for small teams (5–25 people) require a balance between rigour and pragmatism — the goal is to unlock momentum, not create bureaucracy.
  • ELENA TO COMPLETE THIS MISSION
• + Transition to AI. Rationalize team structure, test and choose AI tools for the entire org, and unify the AI process across all PMs.
  • Mission: Unify the AI toolchain and process across a product organization fragmented by individual tool choices.
  • Actions: Benchmarked [N]+ AI tools across PM workflows; ran 2-week pilots with each team; wrote the company's first AI Product Playbook.
  • Impact: Reduced tool fragmentation from [N] stacks to 2 unified tools; onboarding time for new PMs cut by [N]%.
  • Tools: Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Linear
  • Note: The biggest barrier to AI adoption is not tool capability — it's agreeing on a shared process. This is a change management challenge as much as a technical one.
  • ELENA TO COMPLETE THIS MISSION
  • find a project
• + Assist Founders — vibe coding. Development of a startup using only Claude Code. Often no CTO in the team. My main activity.
  • Mission: Enable non-technical founders to ship working products without a CTO or dev team, using Claude Code as the sole development tool.
  • Actions: Defined MVP scope; structured Claude Code prompts; iterated through build-measure-learn cycles; managed technical debt and architecture decisions alongside each founder.
  • Impact: [N] startups shipped functional MVPs in [N]–[N] weeks; one raised a pre-seed round on the basis of the working prototype.
  • Tools: Claude Code, Claude Design, Vercel, Supabase
  • Note: Vibe coding requires strong product judgment (tight scope), technical intuition (catch AI errors), and founder coaching (manage expectations).
  • ELENA TO COMPLETE THIS MISSION
  • My Health Journal App, Detailed CV, Israel History, Dan the Hazan, Saint Michel Valetta
• + Assist Founders — AI tools. Design and development of AI tools tailored to each startup's specific operational or product problems.
  • Mission: Design and build custom AI tools solving specific problems for early-stage startups.
  • Actions: Defined use case and success criteria; selected models and architecture; supervised the build; validated outputs against real business data.
  • Impact: [N] custom AI tools delivered in production; one replaced a manual process consuming [N] hours/week of senior team time.
  • Tools: Claude API, Claude Code, OpenAI API, Supabase
  • Note: The key challenge is scoping. Most founders overestimate what an AI tool needs to do on day one.
  • ELENA TO COMPLETE THIS MISSION
  • News parser, My Health Journal
• + Deliver AI-generated content, prompt engineering. Pro bono, family and friends.
  • Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris.
  • ELENA TO COMPLETE THIS MISSION

Large American corporation, market leader. Reported to Product Director.

• + Head of Product, CMS. Drove roadmap and execution. In charge of communication with US stakeholders.
  • Mission: The CMS powers the website's homepage, category pages, and hundreds of content-pages. I lead the CMS department: transformed the objectives given by the C-level into a detailed roadmap. Decided on the department organization, process and lead the team towards execution within time and budget.
  • • Defined the roadmap.
    • Organized and decided on priorities in the backlog.
    • Shaped and sometimes drafted the product requirements.
    • Created and oversaw the execution of a state-of-the-art documentation and demo pages, for stakeholders benefit.
    • Set up process for effective and happy collaboration with the design team, and "our main client" the ecommerce team.
    • Led the implementation and the usage of the new Design System in the CMS code, and CMS-team's usage.
    • Became the face of CMS towards all stakeholders — customer care, ecommerce, merchandising, etc.
    • Held CMS steering committees.
    • Worked in Agile. Led a Product Manager, a team of 6 to 25 developers (depending on sprints and needs) and 6 QA. Worked with the Head of Data, two shared analysts, 6 shared designers, and creatives.
  • After three years leading the CMS, I was selected for the cross-functional team driving the company's flagship website replatforming program.
  • • Led the CMS RFP, a 6 months project where we teamed up with procurement to select the new CMS tool.
    • Managed the migration from legacy to headless CMS.
    • Not Agile this time: managed an offshore team in India of 20+ developers, 2 product managers and several PMOs.
    • Owned internal communication within the replatforming team.
  • Impact: Established transparent, structured and efficient communication between the CMS team and all its stakeholders. Empowered the e-commerce team to self-serve, reducing their dependency on Product for content updates.
  • Tools: Jira, Confluence, Mixpanel, Adobe Analytics, Figma
• + Product Specialist, E-commerce Retention. (6 months)
  • Mission: Understand and improve repeat purchase rate across Shutterfly's core e-commerce funnel.
  • Actions: Ran a hands-on 6-month deep dive into user data, end-to-end and across all platforms (website and mobile apps). Built analytics dashboards to map the full user flow and study retention mechanics at scale. Identified friction points, fixed bugs, and specified features to remove them.
  • Impact: Contributed, over three quarters, to year-over-year improvements in conversion rate, repeat purchase rate, average order value, and customer lifetime value (LTV).
  • Tools: MixPanel for the mobile applications (an iOS and an Android app), and Adobe Analytics for the website. Plus FullStory, Tableau, Confluence and Jira.
• + Release Manager, iOS Mobile App.
  • Mission: PM in charge of the manual verification of the app end-to-end before each release.
  • Impact: Caught a few minor bugs missed by the QA team.
  • Skill: Patient, methodic, reliable.

New startup. Reported to CEO.

• + Head of Product, First PM. Built the product department: organization, processes and roadmap.
  • Mission: Build the product function from scratch at a new SAAS startup.
  • • Defined the product vision with the CEO and built the product.
    • Hired and onboarded 1 PM.
    • Designed all agile rituals.
    • Created the first product roadmap, aligned to investor milestones.
    • Launched and structured the work between product, engineering and business units.
  • Impact: Product organization operational in 1 week, could be run by a junior PM; company succeeded in presenting an MVP to investors under two weeks, and the final product v1 after a month — which was the set goal.

Fast growing, 350-person startup. Reported to CEO.

• + Head of Product, Consumer Platforms. Lead 5 squads, developed 5 BtoC SAAS products (incl. kiosk). Delivered the roadmap.
  • Mission: Lead all consumer-facing products for Wynd, an omnichannel SAAS solution serving major French retailers.
  • Actions: Managed [N] squads ([N]+ people); owned roadmap for [N] BtoC products (mobile, web, kiosk, loyalty, staff app); aligned with CEO; coordinated cross-product dependencies.
  • Impact: All [N] products delivered on the committed roadmap. Kiosk launched in [N]+ retail locations. Team scaled from [N] to [N] people in 6 months.
  • Tools: Jira, Confluence, Mixpanel, Figma
  • Note: Managing [N] concurrent product lines is a forcing function for systems thinking — you build the right team and the right process, or nothing ships.

A personal cloud storage service — like Dropbox, but with encrypted protocols and your files stored on a physical, secured disk attached to your box (hardware). A "star" tech startup, backed by a famous European VC, fast growing. Reported to CEO.

• + Senior Product Manager.
  • Mission: Came in to manage the two new hires — a product manager/developer and a product design/developer, set up the Product team, processes, roadmap, prioritisation, and be hands-on on a complex foundation feature.
  • • Hands-on product work on the file management system: file status and overlays.
    • Drove the features and UI of the SaaS, across both desktop and mobile apps.
    • Defined the short-term product roadmap — deliberately no long-term plan at this stage.
    • Set feasible objectives and consistently delivered on them.
    • Improved file management.
    • Partnered with Customer Care to significantly reduce the volume of daily complaints and support requests.
    • Introduced a user-feedback channel through the online support site.
    • Improved data tagging.
  • Impact: Delivered every committed objective on time; reduced the daily support workload; and strengthened the product's foundations through better file management, a new user-feedback loop, and cleaner data tagging.
• + Program Management. First and only PMO. Unblock the delivery with a better management of the tech dependencies.
  • Actions: Conducted a series of one-to-one meetings with each of the 11 developers to understand what they were working on. There was no product team at this time, the projects were not documented. We spotted the dependencies and blockers. I created a massive Gantt chart to provide transparency and answers to everyone. We reorganized the order of priorities of the projects, not based on the customer, the importance of the features from a product standpoint, or the business needs, but based on the needs of the technology. In less than a month, we addressed and solved the blockers and started delivering again.
  • Impact: Unblocked the delivery with a better management of the tech dependencies.
  • Tool: Gantt chart.

Doctipharma is a startup launched within the market-leader media corporation Lagardère. It is a sister company to Doctissimo (same office, shared resources).

Reported to CPO then to CEO. Used a shared team of 6 developers and QA. Managed 2 product managers.

• + Head of Catalog and Merchandising.
  • Mission: lalala
  • • Cleaned up (−15%) and expanded (+50%) the product catalog in the PIM (Akeneo).
    • Qualified the catalog database. (Excel)
    • Merchandising: created a "top products" section at the top of catalog (thumbnail) pages, driving a lift in conversion.
    • Managed the position of each product and each marketplace offer on content and category pages — using an internal tool based on the product's score.
    • Improved the content on info, category and catalog pages, to give users clear, important information to choose the right product — among 13K products in the catalog.
    • Tools: PIM Akeneo, Jira, Confluence, Kibana. Agile Scrum. Mockups and low-fidelity wireframes.
• + Product Manager. Search, cross-sell, funnel, e-commerce features. (6 months)
  • Mission: Improve e-commerce KPIs (search, conversion, cross-sell) for a marketplace with a complex catalog.
  • • Modified UX & UI with A/B testing to improve conversion. (Sketch, Kameleon, AB Tasty)
    • Ran a deep study of user baskets and purchases. Tuned the parameters of our cross-sell tool (Nuukik) to improve recommendation relevance and basket size — +20% items per purchase through cross-sell and merchandising.
    • Worked with the tech team on the smart cart algorithm.
    • Added filters and improved search and the site tree to optimize SEO and UX. (Sol-R, Elastic, Doofinder)
    • Improved SEO-friendly content. (Yooda Insight, Bolt)
    • Product evolution of the BtoB platform for sellers in our marketplace (pharmacies). Worked both on the Mirakl platform and on the new internal one — built to replace the Mirakl one.

20-person company, market leader. Reported to CEO. Only PM for two distinct products.

• + Reverso Human Translation and Revision. BtoB and BtoC e-commerce — a service.
  • Mission: Finished, launched and continuously improved the B2B e-commerce platform selling professional human translation services to mostly business clients.
  • • Designed wireframes and mockups.
    • Wrote the product requirements.
    • Navigated a complex partnership with the external agency providing both the tech squad and the translators.
    • Coordinated delivery, reviews, and acted myself as QA.
• + Reverso Documents (aka Reverso Localize). A BtoC SAAS platform.
  • Mission: Own the product for a B2C SAAS platform translating documents and full websites.
  • • The roadmap was largely provided by the CEO. Ran daily product reviews with him.
    • Specified features and did the mockups.
    • Managed the single dedicated in-house developer.
    • Ran A/B tests and qualitative analysis sessions with targeted users; topped this with classic user data, even though the product was young and the user base limited.

• + CEO & founder. Created a physical innovative product. International distribution with points of sale in five countries. Backed by seed VC fund KIMA VENTURES.
  • Developed an innovative physical product, a "backup-shoe": comfortable, rollable after-party flats that fit in a woman's little purse or pocket.
  • • Owned the vision and developed the long- and short-term strategy.
    • Raised seed money from KIMA VENTURES — the prestigious, highly active French seed investor owned by Xavier Niel and managed by Jérémie Berrebi (mostly in tech).
    • Managed the board, investor relations, the bank and the budget.
    • My partner and I led a team of three. Together we:
    • Designed the product.
    • Produced it in China.
    • Built and managed the e-commerce activity.
    • Developed a network of 75 points of sale, mostly in France, with anchors in 4 other countries: the United States (New York and Washington), Austria, Hungary and Germany.
    • Managed marketing, sales, press, finance, HR and administration.
    • Built brand recognition in an emerging market, as a pioneer developing this new usage and market.
    • Effective SEO strategy — ranked first on Google on all our targeted keywords, without ever spending on communication or marketing.
  • Tools: Shopify, Google Analytics, Excel, Mailchimp
  • Feedback and learnings: www.shoette.com

Reported to CEO.

• + Junior Consultant. Deep market analysis, business strategy, and internal information and knowledge management.
  • Mission: Provide strategic insights to clients through market analysis and competitive intelligence. Also acted as program manager for a pool of 65 freelance consultants, deployed on projects based on client and project requirements.
  • Actions: Conducted deep market research and competitive benchmarks; developed business strategy recommendations; structured and maintained internal information and knowledge bases.
  • Signature skill: Data visualization.
  • Impact: Delivered competitive intelligence reports used in senior management strategic decisions.
  • Tools: Excel, PowerPoint, market research databases, press and archive databases, datamining tools
  • Note: First professional experience — developed core analytical, strategic and synthesis skills in a demanding consulting environment.