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Experienced product manager of crafting popular digital products

I focus on creating delightful user experience using a data-driven approach and customer development

This is me - Yana Kuzmina

About

Hi there! My name is Yana, and I am a Product Manager. I have over 7 years experience as a Product Manager including developing products from scratch to a successful product with multi million DAU. I like to work in Agile environment, when I can launch products fast and often with MVP approach. Passionate about customer development and data-driven experiments. Collaborate with engineers while understanding what the end user needs and how to get the product into their hands. Enjoy coming up with creative solutions to difficult challenges. Legally authorized to work in the USA.

Take a look at my CV
Yandex

2013-2016

Yandex is one of the largest internet companies in Europe. It operates the most popular search engine in Russia, over 50% of market share. Headquartered in Moscow, it has offices in 18 locations across nine countries with around 7,500 employees.

Yandex creates over 70 different products and services, such as: YandexMail, YandexMusic, YandexTaxi, YandexFood, YandexAuto, YandexMaps, YandexMarket - you name it! All company's services attract about 60 million visitors daily. In May 2011 Yandex went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange, under the ticker YNDX.

I’ve worked with mobile Yandex Browser for over 3 years, and eventually grew the product to 5 million daily users. I successfully collaborated with a cross-functional team over 100 people, while also working with various other teams in a company to create great product.

I've worked through the whole browser functionality across different platforms, and managed the enhancement of many essential features such as tabs, navigation, starting page, favorites, and history, etc. Defining feature scope for releases, while developing a roadmap and maintaining the product backlog.

Mobile Yandex Browser

I joined the team on idea stage of product development and with firm deadline in mind. In 4 months we launched the first version of mobile browser on iOS meeting the deadline. It was a high pace project with ambiguous circumstances and limited resources.

The app was listed as one of the best applications in 2016 in the AppStore.

Download on the AppStore

Android Phone

Personalized content recommendation feed (aka Zen) was the last project, that I led at Yandex before my departure to the USA. It became a really successful project and made a huge impact in user retention and engagement, and therefore was replicated to the browser on the rest platforms.

Get on Google Play

Android Tablet

The stability and performance are the literally vital attribute for the product on the mature stage with a multimillion audience. I've run a program for beta-version of the browser to gather and monitor performance metrics and user feedback on features on early stage of development.

Today mobile Yandex Browser is the second one after Chrome and Safari on Android and iOS respectively. The market share in Russia ia about 15%.

i-Free

2010-2013

i-Free Group includes more than 20 tech companies and start-ups focus on mobile technology. The company is a specialist developer and implementer of cutting-edge projects in mobile and NFC technology, dealing with electronic payments and micropayments, applications and games for smartphones. i-Free Group products and services are now available in more than 100 countries. Group holding company is located in St. Petersburg, Russia.

I joined the company in 2010 to work in newly created directions for emerging mobile technologies. It was mostly startups environment and I led the team with 5 people. I developed and launched a few mobile applications, more noticeable are Grocery Mate and CandyApps. Then I successfully led a team through an investment committee with a new product concept.

iOS

Grocery Shopping List: Listick

It is an application on iOS, Android, and web to make sync at whole family or band. Since the launch of GroceryMate, it has been the most popular application in the Shopping category in Russia for one year. I've designed the product from scratch and launched it world wide.

Download on the AppStore
Android

Grocery Shopping List: Listick

Monetization is always a key factor in any business, so I know how it is struggling for revenue in startups environment. I've created first monetization model for the application to reach breakeven. I've developed feature ideas into detailed User Stories and collaborated with designers and engineers to run experiments with the features and make real enhancement into the product.

Get on Google Play
Android

CandyApps

CandyApps - app discovery platform for Android users based on machine learning algorithm. The target audience of product was IT-journalists and smartphones heavy users. I've hired editors team to create unique content for apps and games enthusiast. The product worked as a white label product to create own app store for some vendors and MNO.

Get on Google Play

Let's talk about how I can help you improve your product