ALEX URSA

First Employee, Built the Gaming Vertical

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Launched a New Gaming Division : Established and scaled the Gaming Vertical from inception, growing to 110+ employees across five countries.

• Comprehensive Product Roadmaps : Set and executed strategies for three major product verticals—expanding from $0 revenue in 2022 to $20M in 2023, with a projected $60M in 2024.

• New Casual Games Portfolio : Drove innovation by creating a dedicated casual games division, partnering with leading studios, and introducing 12 new game concepts to diversify the product lineup and market reach.

Game Development & Portfolio Management

• Quality & Innovation Focus : Oversaw product, engineering, user experience, and game operations, ensuring high-quality releases that resonated with broad audiences.

• User-Centric Enhancements : Leveraged automation and data-driven insights to optimize customer engagement, delivering consistent, top-tier user experiences.

• Product Experimentation : Developed and executed a structured experimentation roadmap to optimize key product and user engagement metrics, resulting in continuous improvements to conversion rates, retention, and overall user satisfaction.

Mergers & Acquisitions

• Accelerated Product Offerings : Identified and completed two strategic acquisitions, achieving substantial revenue gains and unlocking new market opportunities.

• Integration & Synergy : Seamlessly integrated acquired teams, technology, and processes, capitalizing on cost synergies and operational efficiencies.

Leadership & Team Development

• Global Team Oversight : Directed cross-functional leadership teams (product, engineering, UX, customer operations), fostering a culture of collaboration, accountability, and innovation.

• Talent Growth : Recruited and mentored senior leaders, establishing clear organizational structures and success metrics to drive long-term sustainability and performance.

Financial & Performance Management

• Full P&L Ownership : Managed budgets, vendor negotiations (AWS, payments, compliance, KYC, geolocation), and cost optimization strategies.

• Data-Driven Insights : Monitored KPIs across all product lines, used analytics to guide strategic investments, and ensured alignment with overall corporate objectives.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Regulatory & Compliance Alignment : Partnered closely with compliance, finance, marketing, media, and legal teams to meet evolving regulatory requirements across international markets.

• Stakeholder Engagement : Communicated roadmaps and progress to executives and board members, ensuring organizational clarity and unified strategic direction.

• Major Rollouts : Successfully launched FanDuel Sportsbook in 15 US states and FanDuel Casino in 5 US states, driving significant market presence and growth.

• Executive Collaboration : Worked closely with the executive team to execute the strategy that established FanDuel as America's No. 1 Gaming Brand.

• Leadership & Strategy : Oversaw FanDuel's Account, Wallet, Payments, Responsible Gaming, Promotions, and Operational Tooling product teams, driving vision, strategy, roadmap, and execution.

• Customer-Focused Product Strategy : Developed and implemented a product strategy centered on customer needs, delivering enhanced user experiences and business outcomes.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration : Partnered with heads of UX, engineering, design, marketing, and commercial teams to align on product roadmaps, ensure timely deliveries, and execute successful launches.

• Market & Competitor Expertise : Fostered a culture of domain expertise within the team, emphasizing a deep understanding of the product, market trends, and competitive landscape.

Product Vision & Strategy

• Led FanDuel's Casino, Account, Wallet, Payments, Responsible Gaming (RG), and Customer Support tooling product teams, defining the vision, strategy, and roadmap.

• Created a customer-centric product strategy, consistently advocating for user needs and experience.

• Collaborated with UX, engineering, design, marketing, and commercial leaders to align on product roadmaps, ensure timely deliveries, and launch successful new features.

• Fostered a culture of deep domain expertise, encouraging the team to stay informed on product, market, and competitor insights.

Casino Growth & Innovation

• Drove the Casino's growth to $100M Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) per month by launching in new states, expanding the product portfolio, and adding new content.

• Influenced increased investment in product and technology, enabling rapid iteration and innovation.

• Proposed and delivered an iOS-compliant cross-sell and app experience to support app migration and maintain a seamless user journey.

Account & Wallet (AW) Migration

• Led the AW migration initiative, delivering on a post-migration strategy that addressed key customer pain points and enhanced overall user journeys.

• Ensured Responsible Gaming (RG) measures remained integral throughout the migration, protecting customers and meeting regulatory requirements.

• Maintained clear communication with all stakeholders, including regulators, providing regular updates on progress, challenges, and risk mitigation.

Team Leadership & Development

• Expanded both the Casino and AW product teams by identifying skill gaps, creating clear role definitions, and developing success plans for new hires.

• Established structured goals and personal development plans for each product manager, promoting continuous growth and high performance.

• Championed a customer-first mindset, ensuring product decisions were guided by user experience and business impact.

• Revenue Growth & Product Enhancements : Identified top opportunities and delivered product enhancements for Casino Games, driving revenue growth from $2M to $50M per month.

• US Market Expansion : Introduced the concept of the Casino X-sell lobby to the US market, generating $6M in revenue in the first month

• Next-Generation Casino Product : Developed the business case for the next-generation casino product, securing investment and laying the foundation for current product offerings.

• Account & Wallet Platform Launch : Led the team to understand customer needs and regulatory requirements, resulting in the successful launch of an in-house platform in West Virginia in August 2019.

• Strategic Product Migration : Created a product strategy to support platform migration, achieving feature parity with the legacy platform while enhancing the customer experience.

• Product Strategy & Roadmap : Collaborated with Directors and Heads of Gaming to define the product roadmap across all channels, ensuring a strong Gaming presence in Sportsbooks. Owned end-to-end delivery of Casino, Poker, and Bingo customer journeys, websites, and CMS tools.

• Content & Development Leadership : Led the content strategy and roadmap for 5 game studios, including development for both brands, driving synergies and optimizing the development function for maximum efficiency.

• Tech Delivery Management : Directed the Tech Delivery teams to manage the product and games roadmap, including launch prioritization and timeline negotiation. Enhanced personalization and content discovery through UI/UX improvements.

• Platform Optimization : Leveraged studios and internal platform tools to optimize cross-sell functionality and improve customer acquisition strategies.

• OKRs & Metrics : Defined, tracked, and measured Product OKRs to ensure alignment with business goals. Delivered strong business cases and analysis to underpin roadmap creation and feature prioritization.

• Acquisition & Strategy : Worked with Marketing and Acquisition teams to develop strategies for Casino growth, including enhancing Live Casino features, optimizing gameplay limits, and improving round times to increase revenue.

• Stakeholder Collaboration : Partnered with internal teams (cross-sell, VIP, Compliance, Operations) to meet high-value customer demands, regulatory requirements, and business needs. Managed relationships with third-party vendors like Playtech for commercial and product opportunities.

• Team Leadership : Managed a team of six product owners, guiding their development and performance through goal-setting, training, and appraisals. Drove organizational values and strategic objectives within the team.

• Integration & Innovation : Spearheaded the Single Customer Platform Gaming initiative and led the integration of Paddy Power and Betfair products post-merger. Delivered best-in-class Casino and Gaming products through competitor benchmarking and customer insights.

• Change Management & Communication : Maintained the product roadmap/backlog and adapted plans to meet evolving needs. Produced feature-launch communications and tracked benefit realization.

• Customer-Centric Development : Worked with User Experience teams to design and implement customer-focused user journeys across all channels. Ensured accurate and timely requirements for engineering teams to maximize development efficiency.

• Compliance & Operational Excellence : Collaborated with Compliance and Operations teams to meet regulatory standards and deliver seamless product experiences.

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• Product Strategy & Delivery : Led the product strategy and delivery for a multi-brand, multi-strategy games product platform, implemented across the Flutter Group and still in use today. Directed the launch of new games products to enhance customer engagement and satisfaction.

• M&A Product Integration : Played a key role in the merger of Betfair and PaddyPower by leading the product integrations, ensuring seamless alignment between the two brands.

• Agile Product Development : Collaborated with Agile Scrum teams, actively participating in scrum ceremonies, managing backlogs, and ensuring timely and high-quality delivery of products.

• Roadmap & Business Strategy : Partnered with Business Development and Commercial teams to understand business drivers, define product strategies, and develop roadmaps that align with customer needs and industry trends. Delivered compelling business cases to support product initiatives.

• Stakeholder Collaboration : Worked with cross-functional teams, including UX, Compliance, Legal, Architecture, and Operations, to consolidate and prioritize requirements, ensuring alignment with business and product goals.

• Customer-Centric Design : Collaborated with the User Experience team to create detailed user journeys and designs, delivering customer-focused products across all channels.

• Regulatory Awareness : Provided insights into regulatory developments in the eGaming sector, ensuring compliance and maintaining relevant product, system, and process documentation.

• Lifecycle Management : Owned the product lifecycle for Betfair's Casino products, driving forward innovation and ensuring product relevance and performance.

• Communication & Transparency : Kept Programme and Technology management informed on delivery status and benefits realization, fostering alignment and accountability across stakeholders.

• eCommerce Leadership : Directed complex Magento-based eCommerce initiatives, contributing to key decisions on user experience, engineering approaches, user journeys, and the overall buying experience.

• Product Development : Led the team in creating their first products, including HTML templating, custom Magento extensions, ERP integration, Magento UI improvements, payment modules, and conversion optimization solutions.

• Agile Transformation : Implemented an Agile workflow, streamlining development processes and increasing team efficiency.

• Version Control Adoption : Spearheaded the company-wide adoption of version control (GIT), enhancing collaboration and code management practices.

• Sales & Marketing Integration : Worked closely on sales initiatives and utilized online marketing tools such as MailChimp, Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Webmaster Tools, and SEOMOZ to support client acquisition and retention.

• Data-Driven Optimization : Developed and executed comprehensive multivariate experiments to optimize eCommerce performance.

• Agency Leadership : In the final year, assumed a leadership role overseeing the agency, managing two divisions: Product and Product Development (comprising 30 team members).

• Strategic Growth : Focused on growing internal products that generated recurring revenue, shifting the company's focus from on-demand development to sustainable business models.

• Client Success : Successfully managed critical initiatives and delivered high-quality solutions for top-tier eCommerce clients.

• Pioneering Innovation : Contributed to the creation of one of Romania's first online job application portals, revolutionizing the way candidates applied for jobs and courses.

• Product Roadmap Management : Directed the roadmap for critical processes, including candidate sign-up, candidate management, and the recruiting and placement workflows, ensuring seamless user experiences.

• Digital Transformation : Played a key role in building an online recruiting agency, enabling candidates to easily apply for jobs and courses through a centralized platform.

• Grant-Funded Programs : Managed a portfolio of initiatives aimed at youth and student engagement, ensuring alignment with grant objectives and timely delivery.

• Digital Innovation : Led the development of the organization's first website and a volunteer management app, streamlining operations and enhancing volunteer coordination.

• Volunteer Leadership : Supervised and supported a diverse group of 30 international volunteers, fostering collaboration and achieving program goals.