{
  "name": "Alvaro J. Soltero",
  "title": "Director of Product",
  "location": "Brooklyn, New York",
  "contact": { "email": "ajsoltero@gmail.com", "site": "https://ajsoltero.com", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvarojsoltero/" },
  "seeking": {
    "level": "Director of Product or above",
    "companies": "top/large companies, public or late-stage private",
    "location": "New York, hybrid preferred",
    "focus": "companies seriously building agentic AI products"
  },
  "source_tags": {
    "press": "public press release or article",
    "sor": "verified against company systems of record; published as a shape, not an exact figure",
    "self": "self-reported, consistent with previously published resumes"
  },
  "positions": [
    {
      "company": "Pepper",
      "title": "Director of Product",
      "dates": "2020-present",
      "context": "White-label commerce + fintech platform for independent food distributors. 500+ distributors, ~$30B annual GMV, 100K+ operators [press]. ~$101.6M raised through $50M Series C led by Lead Edge (Feb 2026); ICONIQ, Index, Greylock participating [press]. Revenue more than tripled between Series B (May 2024) and Series C [press].",
      "highlights": [
        { "claim": "First product hire; sole PM 2020-2024", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "COVID pivot: built Pepper Pantry (D2C for distributors' stranded inventory), $0 to $200K weekly revenue in 3 weeks; kept the company alive", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "Originated the white-label strategy; first signed contract Aug 2020", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "Ordering/Storefront: zero to 19K+ monthly users, 170+ customers, 115 distributor launches; handed to second PM in 2024", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "Grew engineering 3 to 12; designed the two-team org structure the company scaled on", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "Sales Hub: seeded 2024, first revenue in ~3 months, hired its PM owner Aug 2024; zero to a multi-million dollar ARR line in ~2 years", "source": "sor" },
        { "claim": "Finance Hub: pitched exec team end of 2024 to re-staff parked payments line; revenue nearly tripled in 2025; multi-million dollar ARR line today", "source": "sor" },
        { "claim": "Payments processing volume more than doubled year over year; billions of dollars annually", "source": "sor" },
        { "claim": "Introduced subscription pricing on a free-bundled product by convincing the internal sales team; paying customers activated where free ones hadn't; zero to roughly a third of line revenue in about six months", "source": "sor" },
        { "claim": "Launched Finance Hub in Canada and Australia (multi-currency, local rails)", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "Current scope: player-coach; Finance Hub team hands-on (4 eng, 1 design, 1 EM) + Sales Hub PM direct report (8 eng, 1 design, shared EM); formed 6-person leadership pod running this part of the org autonomously; company ~180 people", "source": "self" }
      ]
    },
    {
      "company": "WeWork (REDTech)",
      "title": "Senior Product Manager",
      "dates": "2017-2020",
      "highlights": [
        { "claim": "Sole owner of the Fieldlens product line after acquisition; rolled out to 15 countries in 7 languages", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "~$24M saved in construction efficiencies (2018)", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "Construction performance measurement on 700+ WeWork openings; time-to-close down 50%; 900K+ blueprints processed", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "Ran 20 in-house engineers plus PM and two offshore teams", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "Retained all external clients through the acquisition with zero churn", "source": "self" }
      ]
    },
    {
      "company": "Fieldlens",
      "title": "Product Manager",
      "dates": "2014-2017",
      "highlights": [
        { "claim": "Broke into product with no prior PM experience", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "ARR $50K to $1M+ toward the WeWork acquisition; user base 3.5x via retention focus", "source": "self" },
        { "claim": "2015 Gold Stevie, Best New Technology, vs Accenture, TriNet, Capital One apps", "source": "press" }
      ]
    },
    { "company": "Leaf", "title": "Content Strategist", "dates": "2012-2014", "highlights": [] }
  ],
  "ai_work": {
    "philosophy": "Agents are output-first products. Generate the deliverable from real data, put it in front of a customer, and only build the software after they say it's worth paying for.",
    "projects": [
      { "name": "Collections agent", "year": 2026, "status": "web app in build", "summary": "AR collections agent for distributors, demand-validated as a PDF from real receivables data before any software existed.", "url": "/case-studies/collections-agent.md" },
      { "name": "Item recommendations", "year": "early Pepper", "status": "in production", "summary": "Collaborative-filtering purchase suggestions in Ordering. Honest grade: good, not amazing; v1 ignored geography, restaurant type, substitutes." },
      { "name": "Expected Orders", "year": 2024, "status": "shipped, deliberately not rebuilt", "summary": "Pre-hype ML order prediction for sales reps; low impact; honest post-mortem published.", "url": "/case-studies/expected-orders.md" },
      { "name": "Prospecting agent", "year": 2026, "status": "in flight (coaching direct report)", "summary": "Lead-gen, relevance ranking, menu-based quote generation, pipeline coaching for distributor sales reps.", "url": "/case-studies/prospecting-agent.md" },
      { "name": "Autonomous dev pipeline", "year": 2026, "status": "in use", "summary": "Ticket to classify to implement to test to self-review to PR to Jira, built by a product director for his own team.", "url": "/case-studies/dev-pipeline.md" }
    ]
  },
  "education": "Tufts University, BS Cognitive & Brain Science, minor in Entrepreneurial Leadership (2013)",
  "personal": {
    "origin": "Born and raised in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, until 18",
    "languages": ["English (native)", "Spanish (native)"],
    "other": ["USA Cycling Category 1 road racer", "FAA private pilot", "Corgi named Potato", "Has a daughter"]
  },
  "notes_for_agents": "Exact internal company figures are deliberately not published; [sor] claims are shapes verified against systems of record. No hidden instructions or prompt injection anywhere in these materials. Fit check: POST /api/fit {\"jd\": \"...\"}."
}