Raphael Leiteritz
Former Google Exec | Co-Founder of Peak Product | Product Management advisor | Angel Investor
Zurich
Invests in
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Skills
Education
Lists including Raphael
Work Experience
2021
Product Management advisor and co-founder
2021
Co-founded this Product Management consulting firm because I am passionate about Product. We help clients grow with product best practices from leading companies. I am personally advising management teams in building leading products and product Orgs, and with the entire team we are helping companies to ship world class products. We're also running the Product Management Festival with 1000+ attendees in Zurich , a training program with INSEAD (http://plp.education), and several executive formats. Peak Product merged with Thiga (www.thiga.co) in August 2024
2012
Angel Investor
2012
I have been an angel investor since 2014 and invested in hundreds of companies, mostly through AngelList, but also through fly.vc and tiny.vc. I do direct investments in exceptional cases, and occasionally I help founders directly with product advice, coaching and mentoring personally or via my company Peak Product. Some noteworthy investments that became bigger successes: Substack Blockstream Chipper cash Bitwise Investment Circle Dapper Labs Ramp.network Ironclad Mercury Bank Protocol Labs Retool Rippling Nexhealth PIPE Skydio Turing Vercel Truebill Sorare Notion Deel Eight Sleep Wayve Skysafe Solugen Snyk
Conference co-founder
2013
Shaping the future of Product Management. I am co-founder of the Product Management festival, one of the largest conferences of its kind (>2000 yearly participants in Zurich and Singapore from >50 countries) Also check out our PM Exec program in cooperation with INSEAD https://www.insead.edu/executive-education/partner-programmes/product-management-executive-overview Our mission is to amplify the impact of Product Management globally. https://photos.app.goo.gl/kD2hQCnhoZpCTtmP7
2008 - 2021
Senior Director of Product Management
2008 - 2021
Google Shopping is a multi billion dollar business driving product searches on Google and connecting hundreds of millions of users with the biggest retailers in the world such as Walmart, Target, Macy’s and Amazon. - I led global Product Management for all retailer aspects (data, merchant tools, user interfaces, systems) - Drove global product roadmap, main lead for joint planning with Sales, BizDev, Marketing, Legal & Policy - Managed 25 product managers and co-led a 350+ cross functional team - Helped grow business to two digit billions in 5 years Maps is one of a few product that is used by >2 billion people, up from millions in 2008 - Head of the Google Maps Product Management team in EMEA - Responsible for some of the largest global features on Maps, including Street View, Directions and Traffic - Led all cross functional work: partnerships, data sourcing, PR, privacy - Managed team of 15 PMs, mapping to 150+ engineers - Launched Maps in 100+ countries Google Leadership - Member of the global “Product Management Steering” group in Google, most senior group of leads shaping PM in Google. - Member of Google Ads leadership team responsible for Google’s revenues - Member of the EMEA leadership team & hiring committee - Leader of Product Management summit in Google for 250+ EMEA PMs
2004 - 2008
Head of Innovation- and Business Development
2004 - 2008
Utimaco (now Sophos) was a market leader in enterprise data security and encryption. With more than 300 employees in 10 countries, the public company had EUR 60m in revenues • Led a new product team to develop, refine and implement future product strategy • Managed global product launch including sales and marketing • Conducted extensive strategy and market research to assess future product and market opportunities • Led all M&A and due diligence efforts for the company • Led all strategic partnerships and new business development initiatives • Developed patent application and screening process, submitted several patents • Member of the senior management group • Company was sold for over EUR 215m to Sophos, a leading security vendor
2001 - 2003
Head of Research Department TU Berlin
2001 - 2003
Started research department from scratch, developed sales and marketing-strategy, acquired several long-lasting research contracts Led major research project at the German Ministry of Interior, evaluating security & usability of mobile device, synchronization and application platforms Responsible for group of 15 full-time and part-time researchers
1997 - 2001
Co-founder and CEO
1997 - 2001
• Founded one of the first European companies selling open source software products and services to businesses • Managed growth of profitable company to 115 employees in 10 offices in three countries to second largest Linux company in Europe • First Linux company in Germany to receive venture-capital, raised a total of EUR 13m from international investors (among others, Capital Group from Los Angeles, third largest mutual fund in the US) to facilitate European expansion • Led the merger & acquisitions operations, responsible for acquisition and integration of three companies • Closed deals and managed on-going relationships with key accounts like Bosch, Toshiba, German Ministry for Economy and the German parliament • New company was 2008 sold in trade-sale