✌️ Katie Marcus


Hi, I'm Katie: a product maker who cares about sustainable impact.

With over a decade's experience in mission-led consumer and B2B startups and scaleups, I care about making work that matters. My product practice centres on being user-obsessed, strategic yet pragmatic, powered by empowered teams, and value-driven above all.

Product Lead: Progression

B2B SaaS Seed

I took the product leadership reins from the founder-CEO at this career development platform, transforming the pace and impact of the product practice from the ground up.

Leading squads focussed on activation, retention and revenue, I oversaw a ~50% YoY increase on leading metrics, with particular investment in onboarding experience, AI innovation and customer insights.

I've led and coached teams through effective user research, discovery and delivery practices, implemented transparent, data-driven working practices, and created crystal-clear team focus on objectives and impact.

Case study →

Head of Product: Whirli

B2C Subscription Supply chain tech

At this market-leading toy-sharing subscription startup, I was responsible for developing product vision, strategy and roadmap and seeing it through to execution and results.

I managed team hiring and performance, led user-centric product discovery, and iterated working practices to unlock tightly-prioritised value delivery loops: from personalised toy discovery to warehouse-floor apps.

With core objectives were commercial growth, operational efficiency (delivering toys to kids is harder than it sounds), and LTV driven by outstanding customer experience, we delivered 100% YoY growth on our path to Series A along with unit and acquisition cost reductions.

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Product Manager, Sellers: Depop

B2C App & Web Series C

I joined Depop during their pandemic-era hypergrowth, looking after all things seller experience and listing optimisaion. My role involved heavy stakeholder and cross-team alignment as well as defining the strategic roadmaps and objectives for the pillar.

I owned and delivered impact against seller volume and quality metrics, delivering features ranging from improved listing UX to the complexities of category management, automated inventory tagging and shipping integrations.

I scaled the pillar, growing from one to three squads and supporting on hiring, mentoring and improved working practices. I was also a voluntary member of the Sustainabiliy and Accessibility communities of practice.

Senior Product Manager: Unmade

B2B Enterprise SaaS Supply chain tech Series A

I shaped and delivered initiatives across Unmade's entire product suite: a first of its kind offering for demand-driven fashion supply chains comprising online customisation tools, API factory connections and backoffice admin systems. Working closely with enterprise B2B customers including some of the world’s biggest fashion brands, core strategies focussed on scale, cost reduction and innovation.

I led transformative, technically complex initiatives to refine our product and service offering, notably an entire end-to-end automated custom print pipeline and transforming customer implementations from bespke to reuable and scalabe.

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Head of Product Design: Mastered

B2C/B2B Edtech Series A

My role at this fashion edtech involved bringing together content, marketing and product to create a user-centric experience that delivered measurable ROI to our customers and enabled growth by scaling 1:1 services like mentorship.

Driven by customer needs, I conceived, implemented and measured product and service innovations to increase retention, engagement and NPS with our hybrid online-offline learning and collaboration platform.

I line-managed product designers and sat on a cross-functional leadership team who set and delivered against OKRs.

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Product + UX Consultant / Contractor

Prior to my time in startups I had a stint agency-side and in consultancy, firstly at Poke London, an innovative digital agency where I helped deliver award-winning work for clients including Orange, Skype, Mulberry and Manchester City Football Club.

As a freelance contractor, I worked with clients including Adaptive Lab, Human After All, the V&A, Code Club, Provenance and Trouva. Notable projects include an internal performance dashboard for the V&A and a sustainable development goals platform for the World Economic Forum / World Bank.

I then joined Sidekick Studios, executing lean product cycles in a tight multidisciplinary team to concept, design, test and ship new products. We collaborated with organisations such as Comic Relief, Red Bull, Cancer Research UK and Unilever, delivering MVPs and coaching in the skills and tools for them to continue iterating and learning.

Full CV & case studies on request