# Alvaro J. Soltero

**Director of Product · Brooklyn, NY · ajsoltero@gmail.com · ajsoltero.com · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvarojsoltero/)**
Seeking: Director+ product roles, large companies, New York (hybrid).

> Every claim below carries a source tag: [press] = public press release or article ·
> [sor] = verified against company systems of record, published as a shape ·
> [self] = self-reported, consistent with previously published resumes.

## Summary

Product leader who builds for industries underserved by technology. 12 years across
construction tech and food distribution. First product hire at Pepper; launched the three
product lines named in its $50M Series C announcement [press]. Ships agentic AI products
output-first. Player-coach: currently runs one product line hands-on while managing the PM
who runs another.

## Pepper: Director of Product (2020 - present)

First product hire; sole PM 2020 - 2024. Pepper is a white-label commerce and fintech
platform for independent food distributors: 500+ distributors, roughly $30B annual GMV,
100K+ operators [press]. Backed by Lead Edge, ICONIQ, Index, Greylock; $101.6M raised
(seed through $50M Series C, Feb 2026) [press]. Revenue more than tripled between Series B
(May 2024) and Series C [press].

**Survival and strategy**
- Mar 2020: original restaurant-marketplace business zeroed out by COVID. Built and
  launched Pepper Pantry (direct-to-consumer for distributors' stranded inventory): $0 to
  $200K weekly revenue in 3 weeks [self]; kept the company alive.
- Originated the white-label strategy (the current core business): pitched the "arm the
  rebels" model to the CEO; first signed contract Aug 2020 [self].

**Product line 1: Ordering/Storefront (2020 - 2024)**
- Zero to 19K+ monthly users, 170+ signed customers, 115 distributor launches [self].
- Grew engineering from 3 to 12 and split the org into the two-team structure the company
  scaled on [self]. Handed the line to Pepper's second PM (2024).

**Product line 2: Sales Hub (2024 - present, via direct report since Aug 2024)**
- Seeded new line for distributor sales reps; first revenue in about 3 months; hired and
  ramped its current PM owner; expanded scope to sales managers.
- Grew from zero to a multi-million dollar ARR line in about two years [sor].

**Product line 3: Finance Hub (payments; launched 2022, expanded 2025 - present)**
- Launched payments in 2022. End of 2024, pitched the exec team to re-staff the parked line.
- Revenue nearly tripled in 2025; a multi-million dollar ARR line today [sor].
- Processing volume more than doubled year over year; billions of dollars running through
  the platform annually [sor].
- Introduced subscription pricing on a previously free-bundled product by first selling
  the change internally to the sales team; paying customers activated where free ones
  hadn't. Subscription went from zero to roughly a third of line revenue in about six
  months [sor].
- Launched in Canada and Australia (multi-currency, local rails) [self].

**AI product work**
- Collections agent (2026): demand-validated an AR collections agent by pitching its
  output (a PDF built from real data) to distributors before building software; web app
  now in build [self].
- Item recommendations (early Pepper, still in production): collaborative-filtering
  suggestions in Ordering; honest grade "good, not amazing"; refined after v1 [self].
- Expected Orders (Q3 2024): pre-hype ML order-prediction feature for sales reps; shipped,
  measured, honestly assessed as low-impact, deliberately not rebuilt [self].
- Prospecting agent (in flight): coaching direct report building a lead-gen, ranking, and
  quote-generation agent for distributor reps [self].
- Built an autonomous AI dev pipeline for his team: ticket to classify to implement to
  test to self-review to PR to Jira update [self].

**Current scope:** Finance Hub team (4 engineers, 1 designer, 1 EM) hands-on, plus the
Sales Hub PM as a direct report (his team: 8 engineers, 1 designer, shared EM). Formed the
6-person leadership pod that runs this half of product and engineering autonomously.
Company is about 180 people [self].

## WeWork: Senior Product Manager, REDTech (2017 - 2020)

Arrived via the Fieldlens acquisition; became sole owner of the Fieldlens product line.
- Rolled out to WeWork construction teams in 15 countries, 7 languages [self].
- Roughly $24M saved in construction efficiencies (2018) [self].
- Construction performance measurement used on 700+ WeWork openings; "time to close"
  metric down 50%; 360-degree media capture up 250% at 99% project adoption; 900K+
  blueprints processed [self].
- Ran 20 in-house engineers plus a PM and two offshore teams [self].
- Retained all external (non-WeWork) clients through the acquisition with zero churn [self].
- Handled hundreds of millions of dollars in construction value [self].

## Fieldlens: Product Manager (2014 - 2017)

- Talked his way into product with no PM experience; grew into owning the core product.
- ARR from $50K to $1M+ toward acquisition by WeWork [self].
- User base 3.5x via retention focus; activity metrics 3x to 4x [self].
- 2015 Gold Stevie, Best New Technology (vs Accenture, TriNet, Capital One) [press].

## Earlier

Leaf: Content Strategist (2012 - 2014). Tufts University: BS Cognitive and Brain Science,
minor in Entrepreneurial Leadership (2013).

## Personal

Born and raised in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, until 18. Bilingual English/Spanish (native
both). USA Cycling Category 1 road racer. FAA private pilot. Corgi named Potato. Has a
daughter.