{"$schema":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jsonresume/resume-schema/v1.0.0/schema.json","basics":{"name":"Vraj Desai","label":"Product & Business Operations","image":"https://saywise-production-profilepicturestoragebucket-kbfooccc.s3.amazonaws.com/profile-pictures/342a7676-8240-47cc-b479-82ea0e0dea46/linkedin-1791928537656.jpg","summary":"Operator with 7+ years building 0-to-1 consumer and enterprise products. Early hire at three startups, two of them acquired, with hands-on work in LLMs, experimentation, and data-driven product development.","location":{"city":"New York City, NY, United States"},"profiles":[{"network":"LinkedIn","username":"vrajdesai","url":"https://linkedin.com/in/vrajdesai"}]},"meta":{"canonical":"https://saywise.com/member5532","version":"v1.0.0","lastModified":"2026-10-13T21:56:38.007Z"},"x_saywise":{"handle":"member5532","pronouns":null,"availability":null,"oneLiner":"Operator with 7+ years building 0-to-1 consumer and enterprise products. Early hire at three startups, two of them acquired, with hands-on work in LLMs, experimentation, and data-driven product development.","profileUrl":"https://saywise.com/member5532","markdownUrl":"https://saywise.com/member5532/profile.md","pdfUrl":"https://saywise.com/member5532/resume.pdf","archetype":{"code":"RS-DG","name":"Frontier Navigator","url":"https://saywise.com/sca/89c2e6739164","rarity":"One of the first Frontier Navigators on Saywise"}},"work":[{"name":"Partiful","position":"Product & Business Operations (2nd business hire, employee #14)","location":"New York City Metropolitan Area","url":"https://partiful.com","startDate":"2023-06-01","summary":"Drove 400% YoY growth to 5M+ MAU with zero paid acquisition by redesigning onboarding and RSVP flows with eng and design. Doubled viral k-factor and the app was named Google Play Best App of 2024. Owned messaging strategy across SMS, RCS, push, and iMessage, and shipped the Apple Messages for Business integration, which lifted engagement 3x, moved 40% of volume off SMS, and saved $3M+/yr. Built experimentation infrastructure processing 300M+ events/month for A/B testing, funnel analysis, and retention insights."},{"name":"Cohere (acq. by Ramp)","position":"Chief of Staff to CEO (1st business hire, employee #3)","location":"New York City Metropolitan Area","url":"https://cohere.io","startDate":"2021-11-01","endDate":"2023-05-01","summary":"Defined the product from zero as the first business hire, leading the pivot from co-browsing to an AI-powered support platform that reached 60% automated resolution across 200+ customers before Ramp acquired it. Owned the core AI answer experience end to end, including response structure, confidence calibration, hallucination handling, and fallback logic. Found through customer research that onboarding friction was the main barrier to adoption, then redesigned the activation flow through rapid experimentation, reaching an 80% competitive win rate and 150% YoY revenue growth."},{"name":"Brigit (acq. by Upbound for $460M)","position":"Chief of Staff to CTO / CPO (1st business hire, employee #6)","location":"NYC","startDate":"2020-12-01","endDate":"2021-10-01","summary":"Launched Credit Builder from zero to $4M ARR in 4 months, defining the product vision and leading research with credit bureaus and bank partners. Shipped 24-month loan reporting across all 3 bureaus. Designed and ran the A/B testing program for onboarding, activation, and lifecycle flows, improving conversion 35%. Led product strategy for ML-powered credit scoring and repayment models using data across 1B+ transactions, improving underwriting accuracy 27%."},{"name":"Brigit","position":"Chief of Staff, Product & Engineering","location":"New York City Metropolitan Area","url":"https://hellobrigit.com","startDate":"2018-06-01","endDate":"2021-11-01","summary":"Built the Instant Cash product from zero to $40M ARR. Defined repayment flows, risk rules, and core UX for a lending product that has since disbursed $1B+ to users."},{"name":"Societe Generale Corporate and Investment Banking - SGCIB","position":"Investment Banking Summer Analyst","location":"New York City Metropolitan Area","startDate":"2016-06-01","endDate":"2016-08-01","summary":"Energy & Natural Resources"}],"education":[{"institution":"Rutgers University–New Brunswick","studyType":"Finance in Economics","startDate":"2013-01-01","endDate":"2017-01-01"}],"skills":[{"name":"SQL"},{"name":"Microsoft Excel"},{"name":"PowerPoint"},{"name":"Windows"},{"name":"Mac OS X"},{"name":"Outlook"},{"name":"Photoshop"},{"name":"English"},{"name":"Python"},{"name":"BigQuery"},{"name":"LLM/ML systems"},{"name":"Gemini"},{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Anthropic"},{"name":"A/B testing"},{"name":"Prompt engineering"}]}