Arash Vakil

ARASH
VAKIL

Product Leader & Turnaround Specialist
20+
Years
50M
Daily Users
$500M+
ARR
3
Exits
Expertise
Turnarounds
AI/ML Systems
Product Strategy
Startup Advisory
Data Infrastructure
Team Leadership
SaaS Scaling
Web3/DeFi
Growth Eng
M&A Exits
Player-Coach

I lead teams. I write code. 20+ years building products at scale.

I take declining products and make them print money. Turned a 7-year death spiral into 25% YoY growth. Built ML systems processing 2B+ events daily. Led 100+ people across product, engineering, data science, and design. The math works.

Most product leaders stop building. That's a mistake. I still ship code. Taught myself iOS and Android. Launched an app to 100+ countries. Run Ethereum validator nodes. Product leaders who can't build are becoming middle management. Full stop.

Started at Dell EMC. Learned enterprise M&A integration before most people knew what product management was. That foundation still pays dividends.

Queens College undergrad. Baruch MBA. Proud CUNY product. Now I teach there. Giving back to the system that gave me a shot.

Case Studies
Byborg Enterprises

$3B Platform Transformation

Top 50 website globally. Seven years of decline. Everyone said it was a dead platform. I redefined product positioning. Rebuilt the entire GTM motion. Obsessed over user research.

Led product innovation. Shipped 0-to-1 products that hit 1M MAU in 6 months. 5,000+ user research participants. MVP validated in 8 weeks. 150+ countries. Speed wins.

Built an ML recommendation engine processing 2B+ events daily at sub-100ms latency. Put $10M into marketing. Got $110M back. 11x ROAS. That's not luck. That's math.

Established A/B testing infrastructure running 50+ concurrent experiments quarterly. Bayesian statistics. Multi-armed bandits. Data beats opinions.

50M+
Daily Users
11x
ROAS
2B+
Events/Day
Startup

PawMoji: Zero to Exit

Taught myself Swift and Kotlin. Built a pet emoji app from scratch. Scaled to 100+ countries. Got acquired in 2024.

Partnered with NYC animal rescues: Muddy Paws Rescue, Friends with Four Paws, Social Tees. Donated a portion of every sale to animal welfare. Revenue and purpose. Same motion.

Most product leaders stop building. They become meeting people. I wanted to prove I could still ship. Four years. Solo founder. Full stack. Exit. The craft matters.

100+
Countries
4
Years Solo
Exit
Acquired 2024
NASDAQ

Paltalk: PM to CPO to M&A Exit

Started as a Product Manager. Left as Chief Product Officer. Eight years. Acted as divisional CEO. Six straight years of double-digit growth.

Pioneered monetized gamification. One of the first in the industry. Now 50% of company revenue. Cut CAC 75% while increasing ARPU 25%. Redesigned the flagship app. Day 3 retention up 50%.

75%
CAC Reduction
6
Record Years
My Philosophy

Build, Don't Brief

If you can't build, you're becoming irrelevant. Period. Ideas that took months now take 48 hours. While you're in your third alignment meeting, someone else shipped the product.

Wrong Metrics

90% of startups celebrate acquisition like it's the Olympics. Wrong game. The real enterprise value is loyalty. Making your product non-negotiable in their routine. That's the entire game.

Execution Beats Credentials

Fancy resumes are historical documents. The market reinvents itself every 18 months. I bet on intellectual horsepower and bias for action. Every. Single. Time.

Fighting for the Underdog

First-gen immigrant. Worked CVS graveyard shifts while putting myself through college. Character is built through pressure, not polish. The system intimidates people without resources. So I built FreeDemandLetter. Over 1,000 people have used it to reclaim their money and dignity.

Projects
Social Impact

PassItOn.to

Get real guidance from people who've been there. Guides donate 100% of their fees to nonprofits. Every conversation funds verified charities. Advice that creates impact.

Visit Site
Legal Tech

FreeDemandLetter.com

Landlords. Contractors. Scammers. They count on you not knowing how to fight back. 1,000+ people have used this to get their money back. Free.

Visit Site
Open Source

LeiaGuard

WireGuard VPN management done right. Invitation codes for family and teams. QR codes for instant mobile setup. Admin dashboard for full control. Self-hosted. Open source.

GitHub
What People Say

"Incredible attention to detail, deep knowledge, and hard-working nature made development smooth and efficient. His ability to break down complex challenges into clear, actionable steps was exceptional."

Alexey P., Principal Software Engineer

"The person every manager wants on their team. Hard working, dependable, creative. He manages the complete lifecycle of the project better than anyone I know."

David B., Technical Manager

"Uncanny way to see the 30,000 ft view and take it to granular level. Realistic yet visionary. Enables teammates to have high goals and set the company standard at a maximum level."

Rajiv J. G., Product Management
Let's Talk

I advise Series A-C companies on product strategy, turnarounds, and AI integration. One recent client got into Y Combinator. Your product is stuck. Let's fix it.

New York City, NY
Get In Touch