Kushal Shah
About
Kushal Shah is from Greater Seattle Area. Kushal is currently Co-Founder and CEO at Trestle, located in Greater Seattle Area. In Kushal's previous role as a COO and CPO at Ekata, a Mastercard company, Kushal worked in Greater Seattle Area until Jul 2022. Prior to joining Ekata, a Mastercard company, Kushal was a GM APAC, Senior Vice President Product and Engineering at Ekata and held the position of GM APAC, Senior Vice President Product and Engineering at Greater Seattle Area. Prior to that, Kushal was a Senior Vice President of Product Management at Whitepages, based in Greater Seattle Area from Dec 2018 to Jun 2019. Kushal started working as Vice President Of Product Management at Whitepages in Greater Seattle Area in Jan 2017. From Mar 2014 to Nov 2018, Kushal was Vice President Of Product Management at Ekata, a Mastercard company, based in Greater Seattle Area. Prior to that, Kushal was a Organizer at Seattle Product Management Meetup, based in Greater Seattle Area from Apr 2015 to Jun 2017. Kushal started working as Co-founder at GiftGiv in Greater Seattle Area in May 2012.
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Kushal Shah's current jobs
Kushal Shah's past jobs
Ekata Inc., a Mastercard company, empowers businesses to enable frictionless experiences and combat fraud worldwide. Our solutions empower more than 2,000 businesses and partners, including Alipay, Stripe, and Microsoft, to combat cyberfraud and enable an inclusive, frictionless experience for customers in over 230 countries and territories. As the COO, I am the GM of our APAC business and head of the Engineering and Product disciplines. Post-acquisition, the focus has been integration with Mastercard both on GTM and Product side to build and take an industry-leading identity solutions product portfolio to the market.
As part of leading our global expansion efforts, opened our offices in Singapore and am leading the APAC P&L for the last few years. Led the M&A efforts with the CEO and CFO, which ultimately resulted in the acquisition by Mastercard.
Whitepages is a market leader in identity data for consumers that help 35 million monthly visitors find and verify identities online. I led the strategy and execution to transform Whitepages from advertising to an eCommerce subscription business. This helped transition the business from declining advertising revenue to a fast-growing eCommerce business with significantly higher EBITDA margins in 2 years.
Whitepages, being the top 50 web properties globally, I led the focus on the differentiated SEO assets and capabilities to increase traffic, the single most crucial factor for the business revenues. This included improving the off-page authority (domain history and backlinks), technical strength (easy to index), and on-page experience (content and clean UI/UX).
Played a key role in identifying the product-market fit that is repeatable and can be scaled to go after a huge untapped opportunity with a large TAM. Scaled the business from its initial product-market to product-market-channel fit through both direct and indirect channels. Also, accelerated the go-to-market by sharpening the focus on just identity verification use cases for account opening and transaction processing. Post finding the product-market-channel fit, defined and executed Ekata's growth strategy to successfully expand from single geo (N. America), single product to a global offering with a product portfolio expanding the TAM by 10X. Promoted in 2017, to lead Product Management for the B2C business unit (Whitepages experience below) in addition to Ekata (formerly Whitepages Pro that was spun off as Ekata eventually).
We started the Product Management Seattle chapter for 2 reasons: (1) Network with smart Product Managers who are part of Seattle's growing technology landscape. (2) Hear the battle stories, insights and best practices from the experts who have built some impressive products through the years. It has been a successful endeavor with some of the brightest minds coming together every few weeks to share their experiences and collectively help each other build some great products. To join the community and RSVP for our latest meetup, go here: https://meetup.com/ProductTank-Seattle/
Giftgiv started as a moonlighting project from a Seattle startup event to make giving kudos easier for professionals. As a founder, raised seed capital, built the initial MVP product, and iterated over it to find the product-market fit. Got a lot of good learnings on the app marketplace business model, product development, and building a business from the ground up.
A Techstars company focused on finding leads for recruiters and salespeople from their social networks. Initial funding received - $100,000. Along with the co-founder, scoped the customer pain point, built the initial MVP product, and iterated over it till we found the product-market fit. The business could not scale as the social networks closed their APIs. However, excellent learnings building a SaaS business with a team of 10+ people.
Led product management initiatives in .Net framework, Azure, and Windows. In the Windows team, led multiple projects for the adoption of the Windows 8 app ecosystem in enterprises. This included defining the value proposition and messaging of Windows apps for enterprises and then delivering on them via apps for select Fortune 1000 companies like Citrix, Emirates Airlines, Best Buy, Sungard, SmartSight, etc. In the Azure team, led a team of 5+ engineers for planning and delivery of Azure services including queues, access control and workflows.
Lead product management and development of online student loan application system.
Software developer responsible for maintaining and upgrading various simulators the company specializes in.