Sanjay Raman
Chief Product Officer, Tripadvisor
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Chief Product Officer
2023 - Current
I lead the Product, Design, and User Research teams (a team of ~125) for Tripadvisor. We are passionate about building world-class products that inspire and empower travelers. We are focused on growing multiple lines of business through category marketplaces (Hotels, Experiences, and Restaurants), driving engagement through products that help you plan, and shaping the future of travel through AI.
TripConnect is an online service that allows people to get travel advice from people they know.
Raised $1,000,000.00 from Masthead Venture Partners.
Member
2023
The Skip CPO group is a community of 20-plus current and ex-head of products from across the tech industry. On average, a head of product remains in that role for only two years before exiting. The Skip community aims to extend this by developing and sharing best practices on how to lead a product function, successfully partner with the company’s leaders, craft product organizations, hire and scale a product team, and expand a product portfolio. Members collectively have more than 50 years of product leadership experience across dozens of industries including fintech, security, web3, and e-commerce and are some of the most accomplished and influential executives in the industry. The CPO group is invitation-only and is part of the Skip platform devoted to help tech professionals skip ahead in their career.
Director of Product Management
2019 - 2023
During my time at Airbnb, I led the growth of Airbnb Plus, a new, premium tier of homes verified for quality. My teams were responsible for driving the growth of Plus supply and maintaining a high-quality experience for guests. I also led product and cross-functional teams focused on improving the quality of trips across the entire marketplace, including our Superhost program.
Lake Swan Properties is a holiday home rental company.
VP of Product
2014 - 2019
Over the course of 5+ years, I built and scaled the Houzz Marketplace, which enables consumers and professionals to buy home goods through the Houzz platform. This became a new and significant line of business for Houzz. Houzz is the leading online platform for home remodeling and design, providing people with everything they need to improve their homes from start to finish - online or from a mobile device. From decorating a room to building a custom home, Houzz connects millions of homeowners, home design enthusiasts and home improvement professionals across the country and around the world. With the largest residential design database in the world and a vibrant community powered by social tools, Houzz is the easiest way for people to get the design inspiration, project advice, product information and professional reviews they need to help turn ideas into reality.
Houzz is an online platform for home remodeling, architecture, interior design, decorating, landscaping, and home improvement.
Raised $613,600,000.00 from Sina Afra.
Investor
2011 - 2014
Greylock is a leading venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Greylock partners with entrepreneurs to build market-transforming consumer and enterprise companies. Greylock has invested in companies like Airbnb, Linkedin, Facebook, Workday, Nextdoor, Dropbox, Pandora, Discord, Coinbase and many more. I invested in teams and companies in the consumer internet space. I spent most of my time finding or helping new companies in one of these areas: marketplaces, mobile transactional business, consumerization of the enterprise, new media, and advertising -- all being driven by the mobile and social waves.
Greylock Partners invests in entrepreneurs that focus on consumer and enterprise software companies.
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer
2008 - 2012
I co-founded Howcast in 2008 with former colleagues from Google. Howcast is an online video company that produces and distributes short-form how-to videos across the web and has regularly been named on Time's annual 50 Best Websites as well as regularly being featured in the App Store. I built our team and led all product and engineering strategy across the company. Additionally, as a founder, I filled in key gaps across sales and business development. Known for high-quality content, Howcast streams tens of millions of videos every month across its multi-platform distribution network. With over five million downloads across iPhone, iPad, and Android, Howcast is the #1 mobile app for instructional content -- wherever you are. We are a venture-funded company based in New York and San Francisco. Howcast continues to operate successfully after my departure.
Product Manager
2004 - 2008
I spent ~4 years at Google, leading several product initiatives, most recently as a Product Manager for Google Apps, where I was responsible for syndicating Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and other products to large enterprises, ISPs, and SMBs. As one of the initial members of the Google Video team, I launched the first user-generated video upload platform and led several key areas of the product. Some specific accomplishments: Google Apps: * Led product vision and strategy for the distribution of Gmail, Docs, and Calendar to ISPs, which accounted for 5% of all global Gmail users * With other PMs, launched Google Apps Premier edition to sell the product to enterprise customers * Managed a team of 5 engineers to develop the Google Partner Start Page, enabling small businesses to create customized portals for their employees and large partners, such as Dell and Firefox, to increase subscriber revenue through Google search (the product directly accounted for over $80M in annual revenue) * Developed a program for PC OEMs to bundle Apps with machine sales, creating a new distribution channel for the product Google Video * Conceived and launched the first video upload platform, transitioning the product from a television search index to a user-generated content site * Responsible for all publisher-facing and monetization products designed to grow our content library and enable partners to earn revenue by syndicating video content to Google Google Checkout * Sold product to many pre-launch customers * Designed product enhancements to improve partner customization of the purchasing experience through Google
Google is a multinational corporation that specializes in Internet-related services and organizes the world’s information.
Raised $26,100,000.00 from Angel Investors LP, Kleiner Perkins, Signatures Capital, Sequoia Capital, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shaquille O'Neal, Henry Kissinger, Google and Tiger Woods.
Associate
2002 - 2004
I led a group of four engineers to design and develop an internal software product to execute automated equities trading and portfolio allocation strategies, working directly with trading desk counterparts.
Morgan Stanley Venture Partners is a private equity firm that invests in high-growth companies in the technology and healthcare industries.
Co-Founder and Chief Architect
2000 - 2001
I co-founded this enterprise mobile software and applications company with several classmates while completing my undergraduate degree at MIT. We raised $2M in funding and grew the company to 25 employees. The company was sold to JP Mobile in 2001 (subsequently acquired by Motorola in 2006). Some specific responsibilities: * Conceived, designed, and managed a team of three engineers to develop our core product * Drove all technical presales activity to sell customers on our technology; closed over $200k of business in 2001
Program Manager Intern
1999 - 1999
I designed and shipped a content management feature of Visual Studio .NET during my four month internship, working closely with engineering, design, and marketing teams across the company
Microsoft Advertising provides digital advertising solutions.