René Bastijans

Research and revenue-intelligence consultancy for B2B companies · Clients in the US and Europe

• Answer Leadership, Product, Sales and Marketing questions by mining clients' existing customer data (Sales and Client Success call transcripts, email, voicemail and SMS, CRM records) with AI-assisted conversation analysis, checked by hand (ongoing retainer).
• Coach the client's Sales and Client Success teams on buyer indecision from their own calls, with business partner, and run the win-loss interviews that led the COO to commission a quarterly win-loss programme (ongoing retainer).
• Set the brief for the AI-assisted conversation analysis that business partner builds, and ran about 30 analyses on client work as throughput grew from 5 runs a month to 50–80, feeding back what the runs showed; every finding traceable to its source.
• Conducted churn and value-driver analysis from CRM data and call transcripts for a B2B fintech client, identifying the main churn patterns that fed its retention plan.

Remote from Lisbon · Berlin-based pre-accounting SaaS

• Built the research practice as its only researcher: ran the discovery and evaluative studies (switch interviews, Simulated Selection, concept testing, surveys) and coached Product, Sales and Marketing to run their own.
• Validated a new product line in three months, from competitive market analysis through Customer Advisory Board interviews to Simulated Selection, giving Leadership the evidence for a go decision and a phased roadmap.
• Set up the in-house research panel of 200 finance professionals with the BI analyst, the base for 20+ studies.

Self-employed · Lisbon · Clients in Europe and North America

• Helped develop the Simulated Selection method; helped global clients optimise existing products and create new ones through iterative experimentation grounded in Jobs-to-be-Done theory.

Self-employed · Lisbon

• Ran Jobs-to-be-Done market and customer research for software clients: switch interviews, demand map, prioritised growth opportunities for Product, Marketing and Leadership teams.
• Interim Head of Product, Shaperbuddy (Oct 2016 – Apr 2017): owned Product and Customer Experience for a cloud SaaS for surfboard manufacturers; introduced customer-driven development and delivery processes.

Self-employed · Lisbon

• Ran Protechting, the corporate startup accelerator with Fidelidade (Portugal's leading insurer) and parent company Fosun; mentored early and later-stage startups in the Lisbon Challenge and Beta-start programmes.

London · Promoted from Product Manager (2011–13) via Director, Product Management (2013) to Director, Future Technologies (2014–15)

• First hire in the Future Technologies team; grew it to 8 Product Managers, Designers and Developers delivering prototypes of digital learning products built on emerging consumer technologies.
• As Director, led the distributed cross-functional R&D unit and the internal corporate innovation community; set strategy and success metrics for prototypes, managed the team budget and line-managed three Product Managers.

• Product Manager, Momondo / Cheapflights (2008–2011): international travel sites and mobile app for CA, AU/NZ, DE, ES, FR and IT. Product Manager, AOL Europe (2007–2008). Product Manager, Ladbrokes (2006–2007): 14 language versions of Ladbrokes.com. Operations Manager, Ladbrokes (2002–2006): launched the German-language site; ran sports-betting, casino and poker operations in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. Qualitative Market & Media Researcher, rheingold, Cologne (1998–2001): in-depth interviews and findings reports for advertising, print and TV clients.