Executive Product & Business Leader
Johannes Mayer
Vice President Product & User Experience · kununu Austria
Building High-Performing Organizations and Driving Growth through Trust and Clarity.
Executive Summary
Executive leader with nearly 20 years of experience building and scaling digital businesses, creating new growth engines and transforming organizations across HR Tech, FinTech, PropTech and marketplaces.
Turns strategy into measurable business outcomes: Scaled a digital platform to ~100M annual sessions and 5x the traffic of its nearest competitor, built new business verticals from the ground up, including one now generating ~25% of total platform traffic, accelerated customer onboarding by 10x, shaped and translated AI strategy into four B2C and B2B products, including one increasing customer review responses by 30%.
Builds strong leaders and organizations while staying close to execution: Led a 25 FTE cross-functional organization through three Directors, helped establish a business as a standalone company following a carve-out, and represented the company before boards, shareholders, PE firms and strategic investors.
Professional Experience
- Drove growth strategy, scaling the platform to ~100M annual sessions and extending DACH market leadership to 5x the traffic of the nearest competitor, with 90%+ #1 rankings across strategic keyword groups and recurring engagement models.
- Built new growth engines beyond the core employer-review business: Initiated the Jobs vertical from 0→1, developing the product concept and business model and scaling it to 210,000+ jobs. Launched a new SME employer-branding proposition, significantly expanding the addressable market.
- Defined and drove the company's AI strategy from adoption to product execution, launching four B2C and B2B products including Review Summaries, AI Career Coach, Commenting Assistant and SWOT Analysis; the Commenting Assistant increased employer review responses by 30%.
- Led and developed a cross-functional organization of 25 FTE through three Directors across Product, UX, Research, SEO and Experimentation in four locations.
- Helped establish kununu as a standalone company following its carve-out, taking on Procurement and Real Estate, defining the office footprint, establishing independent procurement processes and tooling.
- Drove the company's KPI- and OKR-based operating model, establishing clear objectives, ownership and prioritization to translate strategy into focused, measurable execution.
- Member of the Leadership Team with power of attorney (Prokura) and company-wide responsibility for product strategy and portfolio performance. Regularly represented kununu before group boards, supervisory boards and shareholders and participated in management presentations to investors.
- Led and scaled a 15 FTE organization across Product, UX, Research, SEO and CRO, building the capabilities and leadership foundation for kununu's next phase of growth.
- Scaled the Salary vertical into a major platform growth engine, which since contributes ~25% of kununu's total traffic.
- Built and professionalized SEO, Research and Jobs-to-be-Done capabilities, embedding customer insight and data-driven decision-making into product strategy, contributing to kununu's organic growth.
- Co-led company-wide strategy execution and organizational development, evolving the OKR-based operating model and cross-functional tribe structure to strengthen priorities, ownership and execution.
- Led a cross-functional project group of 15 FTE in defining the company's mid- to long-term vision and strategy, creating a shared direction and strategic alignment across the business.
- Initiated and led the launch of new Salary and Culture verticals, expanding kununu beyond employer reviews and creating new engagement and growth opportunities.
- Increased the company's core KPI, “Insights Collected”, by 55% through data-driven experimentation, generating approximately €7m annually in additional business value at current scale.
- Increased the company's core KPI, “Reviews Collected”, by 80% on desktop and 120% on mobile.
- Enabled the launch and growth of the company's US business in a highly competitive international market through a co-developed product strategy and roadmap.
- Accelerated customer onboarding time by 10x, from three weeks to 1–2 days, through automation.
- Owned product roadmap and delivery for the B2C wallet and B2B portal in 30+ markets.
- Served 1.6m users across three banking brands, responsible for e-banking, mobile & SMS offerings.
- Graduated from the company's high-potential and future leadership program ‘forTalents’.
- Increased the core KPI “Anfrage stellen” by 90%, held responsibility for platform, product and pricing.
Academic Education
MBA – Entrepreneurship and Strategic Innovation & Digital Marketing · 4.0 GPA
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Mag. (FH), Business Consultancy · Final Grade 1.25 (Austrian Grading System)
University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt