COMMERCIAL JUDGMENT. HANDS-ON EXECUTION.

Build the
right product.
Make growth
repeatable.

I bring product direction, strong teams, and hands-on AI execution to the same table.

Discuss a leadership role See how I think

CPO · VP Product · Head of Product New York City

Arash VakilLEADER. BUILDER. OPERATOR.

01 / DIRECTION

Make the call.

Connect the customer problem to the business model. Decide what matters.

02 / PEOPLE

Give teams clarity.

Set the direction, make the tradeoffs explicit, and give people room to deliver.

03 / EXECUTION

Stay close to the work.

Build, test, and learn. Use AI where it helps turn a good decision into a useful product.

01 / THE DECISION ROOM

INTERACTIVE · ILLUSTRATIVE

Good strategy shows up
in the tradeoffs.

Take a seat. Change the priorities.
See what a decision gives you,
and what it asks you to give up.

THE SITUATION

More traffic.
Same growth problem.

A hypothetical consumer product attracts new customers, but too few come back. You have a fixed effort budget. Where would you put it?

Investment in the core experience65%

More acquisitionMore retention

Move the slider to shift a fixed, hypothetical effort budget.

Time to evaluate

3 months6 months12 months

REPEAT-USE INDEX

127vs. a 100 starting point

SYNTHETIC MODEL

Your allocationUnchanged approach

THE TRADEOFF

Give customers a reason to return.

More effort goes into repeat value. Near-term reach gets less investment, and the decision needs cohort evidence before you scale it.

Illustrative only. All values are invented to make tradeoffs visible. This is not a forecast or a record of company performance.

How the model works

A model starts the conversation.
Customer evidence makes the decision.

02 / LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE

HYPOTHETICAL CASES · NOT COMPANY HISTORY

Behind every roadmap,
there's a hard decision.

Three situations that reveal the work of product leadership: diagnosis, prioritization, and follow-through.

01Fix the product before buying more growth.

CHALLENGE

A hypothetical consumer product attracts new customers, but too few find a reason to return.

DECISION & TRADEOFF

Investigate the first useful moment. Shift some effort from acquisition to onboarding and repeat use, accepting slower near-term reach.

OUTCOME TO LOOK FOR

More customers reach value and come back. Validate by cohort before increasing acquisition again.

02Give the team a smaller, sharper mandate.

CHALLENGE

A hypothetical team is busy across several initiatives, while dependencies and shifting requests delay useful releases.

DECISION & TRADEOFF

Choose one customer outcome. Give it a clear owner. Pause attractive work that competes for the same capacity.

OUTCOME TO LOOK FOR

Shorter feedback loops and clearer accountability. Watch the risks created by the work you paused.

03Turn an AI experiment into a customer workflow.

CHALLENGE

A hypothetical company has impressive demos, but no reliable path from a model's output to a customer's completed task.

DECISION & TRADEOFF

Narrow the use case. Define a quality bar, an evaluation set, and a fallback. Invest in reliability before widening the feature set.

OUTCOME TO LOOK FOR

A workflow customers can trust. Measure completed tasks, failure modes, and support burden before expanding.

03 / EXPERIENCE

Executive perspective.
Builder's instincts.

I've led product at consumer platforms. Today, I also build and operate products myself. That keeps strategy close to the customer, the code, and the business.

Full background on LinkedIn

2024 — PRESENT

Independent builder & advisor

Vakil Ventures

2020 — 2024

SVP, Product

Live-streaming platforms · 50 million daily active users

2016 — 2020

Chief Product Officer

Paltalk

2008 — 2016

Product Manager → CPO

Mobile apps for dating, live video, and social communities · International expansion

EARLIER CAREER

Dell EMC

Enterprise technology and M&A integration

2020 — 2024 · IN PARALLEL

Founder & builder

PawMoji · A pet emoji app, built independently and acquired in 2024

Queens College · Baruch MBA · New York City

WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER

Leadership that stays
close to the work.

Full-time product leadership, fractional support, or a focused advisory engagement.

FULL-TIME

CPO, VP, Head of Product.

Own the product direction, build the team, and connect the roadmap to customer and commercial outcomes.

Discuss a leadership role

FRACTIONAL

Senior judgment, embedded.

Work alongside a team that needs experienced product leadership before making a full-time hire.

Discuss fractional support

ADVISORY

A focused mandate.

Product audits, strategic sprints, growth systems, M&A diligence, and board-level product conversations.

Discuss an advisory engagement

Direction, then delivery.

The operating approach behind the work.

Build the learning loop.

Connect acquisition, onboarding, repeat use, pricing, and measurement. Use channel automation across Reddit, Google, TikTok, Meta, and Instagram where it makes the work more useful.

AI with an owner.

Define the customer task, choose the model for the job, and keep architecture, evaluation, and review in the loop. I stay hands-on with the code and the product decisions.

Keep the human context.

My path started at Dell EMC and continued through consumer product leadership. I'm a first-generation immigrant, a Queens College graduate, and a Baruch MBA. Building useful tools and giving back to CUNY remain part of the work.

Read the Extern case study

04 / SELECTED BUILDS

STRATEGY MEETS THE WORK

Still building.
Still learning.

A few products from the portfolio.
Different problems. The same appetite
for making something useful.

01 / AI · REAL ESTATE

Stylst.

Virtual staging and photo tools for property listings.

Explore Stylst 02 / MOBILE · CIVIC DATA

Cooked?

Restaurant inspection data, made easier to find and understand.

Explore Cooked? 03 / CONSUMER · AUTOMATION

BagRescue

Monitoring and automated reservations for Too Good To Go bags.

Explore BagRescue

Explore the full portfolio All products and works in progress

AI · Real EstateLive

Stylst

Virtual staging and photo tools for property listings.

Build theright product.Make growthrepeatable.

Make the call.

Give teams clarity.

Stay close to the work.

Good strategy shows upin the tradeoffs.

More traffic.Same growth problem.

Give customers a reason to return.

Behind every roadmap,there's a hard decision.

Executive perspective.Builder's instincts.

Independent builder & advisor

SVP, Product

Chief Product Officer

Product Manager → CPO

Dell EMC

Founder & builder

Leadership that staysclose to the work.

CPO, VP, Head of Product.

Senior judgment, embedded.

A focused mandate.

Direction, then delivery.

Build the learning loop.

AI with an owner.

Keep the human context.

Still building.Still learning.

Stylst.

Cooked?

BagRescue

Stylst

BagRescue

Cooked

Yar

Founderline

FreeDemandLetter

PassItOn.to

TailorTail

Upshift Cycling

Let Me Take A Look

UpdatesOn

FixTheMets

LeiaGuard

Pasur Online

Talon

Haulduo

ShadowShare

FlightSim

Stoop

Scrub In

Skyrise

Carefully

Orbit

Product is a practice.

I Deleted My Best Statistic Two Days Before the Boston Globe's B-Side Cited Me

Privacy Erosion Isn't a Bug. It's the Business Model.

I Can't Stop Taking Things Apart

What needs tomove forward?

Build the
right product.
Make growth
repeatable.

Good strategy shows up
in the tradeoffs.

More traffic.
Same growth problem.

Behind every roadmap,
there's a hard decision.

Executive perspective.
Builder's instincts.

Leadership that stays
close to the work.

Still building.
Still learning.

What needs to
move forward?