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 scaling digital businesses, transforming organizations and delivering measurable growth across HR Tech, FinTech and marketplace businesses.
Proven track record of translating strategy into business outcomes, including extending market leadership to 5x the nearest competitor, accelerating customer onboarding by 10x, generating approximately €1.5M in annual business value through data-driven experimentation, and driving other significant KPI improvements across multiple businesses.
Known for creating clarity in complex environments, building high-performing leadership teams and aligning strategy, people and execution around shared objectives. Trusted partner to boards, shareholders and investors, combining strategic acumen, product expertise and trust-based leadership to strengthen organizations, accelerate growth and deliver lasting impact.
Professional Experience
- Member of the Executive Team with company-wide responsibility for product strategy and portfolio performance, while shaping organizational effectiveness and strategic alignment.
- Hold power of attorney (Prokura) and regularly represent the company before the group board, supervisory board, stakeholders, shareholders and investors, communicating strategy, performance and growth opportunities while contributing to strategic alignment and decision-making.
- Lead, scale and develop a cross-functional organization of 25 FTE spanning Product, User & Customer Experience, Research, SEO and Experimentation through a senior leadership layer of three Directors, increasing organizational scalability, leadership capacity and decision-making effectiveness.
- Define and drive the company's AI strategy, leading the first large-scale AI adoption initiatives across the organization and launching four AI-powered features for users and customers, positioning kununu as an innovation leader within the group.
- Shape the company's KPI- and OKR-based operating model, translating strategy into clear priorities, measurable outcomes and aligned execution across teams and functions while reducing organizational complexity and improving focus, prioritization and accountability.
- Lead the expansion into jobs and SME verticals, creating new growth engines, launching new commercial offerings and diversifying the platform beyond its traditional core proposition.
- Drive growth strategy, expanding DACH market leadership to 5x the traffic of the nearest competitor through market-leading search visibility (90%+ #1 rankings across key strategic keyword groups) and recurring engagement models.
- Led Product, UX, Research, SEO and CRO teams of 15 FTE, building high-performing organizational capabilities that enabled future growth and organizational scale.
- Built and developed highly capable SEO, Research and JTBD practices, enabling a deep understanding of user and customer needs to improve product strategy and decision-making.
- Hired, developed and mentored Product Managers into high-performing contributors, strengthening leadership capabilities and supporting organizational growth.
- Co-led company-wide strategic initiatives, OKRs and the evolution of the tribe model, improving alignment, accountability and execution across teams and functions.
- Represented product strategy at group board and supervisory board level, helping align product investments and strategic priorities with broader business objectives.
- Built and led a Product Management team of 5 FTE, establishing product management as a strategic capability to translate business objectives into product outcomes.
- 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.
- Led the expansion of kununu's offering beyond employer reviews into salary and culture verticals, diversifying the platform and creating new opportunities for engagement and growth.
- Increased the company's core KPI, "Insights Collected", by 55% through data-driven experimentation, generating approximately €1.5M annually in additional business value.
- Co-developed product strategy and roadmap, enabling the launch and growth of the company's US business in a highly competitive international market.
- Increased the company's core KPI, "Reviews Collected", by 80% on desktop and 120% on mobile.
- Owned product roadmap and delivery for the B2C wallet and B2B portal in 30+ markets.
- Reduced customer onboarding time from three weeks to 1–2 days, accelerating activation by 10x.
- Managed e-banking, mobile & SMS offerings across three banking brands serving 1.6 million users.
- Graduated from the company's high-potential and future leadership program "forTalents".
- Held product responsibility for key platform areas and increased the core KPI "Anfrage stellen" by 90%.
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