Chris Honey

Who they are

Chris Honey is Staff Product Manager – Search at Booksy — co-founded howler in 2016, South Africa's nightlife ticketing and cashless payments company that backed Ultra South Africa and Sonar Barcelona.

Person

Chris studied Strategic Brand Management at Vega School at Emeris before pivoting hard into product and engineering — an unusual combination that shows up across his whole career. He co-founded howler in 2016, building it into South Africa's leading nightlife ticketing and cashless payments platform, powering festivals including Ultra South Africa and Sonar Barcelona, and taking it to Series B. From there he moved into big-tech product at Amazon, leading seasonal shopping experiences for the US market, then to Glovo in Barcelona where he ran groceries and the broader shopping experience, mentoring in Glovo's associate PM program along the way. His most distinctive stop was Docplanner, where as Product Director he led Noa AI — an AI assistant built specifically for doctors — and spoke about it at Twilio SIGNALconf in 2025. He joined Booksy in June 2026 as Staff PM for Search, where he's working on an area he calls Agentic Discovery. The through-line: consumer-facing marketplaces at scale, with a recurring pull toward AI-driven personalization and discovery. He mentors PMs, trained product managers at Amazon, and posts on LinkedIn about AI judgment in product, accuracy in healthcare AI, and team dynamics.

Company

Booksy's most recent capital event was an $84.1 million Later Stage VC round in September 2025, building on the $169 million it had raised across 14 prior rounds. It secured additional growth financing from CIBC Innovation Banking in October 2024 to accelerate client acquisition and market expansion. On the product side, Booksy launched machine-learning models in 2025 that predict churn and automate personalized promotions, reporting a 95% merchant retention rate by early 2026. Revenue grew from $35.2 million in 2023 to $65.9 million in 2024. The company is expanding beyond booking into B2B e-commerce with Booksy Store, letting salon owners manage bookings, inventory, and wholesale product ordering in one interface.

Market

Booksy is the largest global beauty and wellness booking platform, with a strong presence in the US, UK, EU, and Poland, competing against Fresha, Vagaro, Mindbody, StyleSeat, Zenoti, and Calendly. The market is consolidating fast — winner-takes-most dynamics driven by platform scale, proprietary booking data, and M&A (Booksy has acquired Lavito, Versum, Genbook, and Kiute). Rising customer acquisition costs, GDPR and CCPA compliance pressure, and fintech regulation around its payments and lending products are increasing operational complexity as the company scales.

How they likely show up

  • Co-founded howler from scratch and ran product and engineering simultaneously → comfortable owning both the 'what' and the 'how'; unlikely to defer technical decisions to others.
  • Career arc moves from nightlife-tech founder → Amazon → Glovo → Docplanner → Booksy, each a materially different domain → adapts quickly to new verticals and is probably energized by the learning curve, not slowed by it.
  • Led Noa AI at Docplanner (AI assistant for doctors) and now working on Agentic Discovery at Booksy → consistently gravitates toward AI-driven product surfaces, not just as a feature but as the core product bet.
  • Mentored in Glovo's associate PM program and trained PMs at Amazon → likely operates as a multiplier on teams, not just an individual contributor; probably invests in the people around him.
  • Spoke at Twilio SIGNALconf in 2025 and posts on LinkedIn about AI judgment and accuracy → comfortable being visible and has a point of view worth hearing, not just a practitioner who ships quietly.
  • Possibly — side project on Raspberry Pi HDFS with a Docker version suggests hands-on technical curiosity that extends beyond product specs into infrastructure and tooling.

Conversation tips

  • → Ask about howler specifically — he built it from a standing start to Series B and it's the most formative chapter of his career; he'll have real stories about marketplace dynamics, festival operations, and cashless payments that don't come from a PM playbook.
  • → Engage on the Noa AI work — he has a stated view that accuracy in healthcare AI is non-negotiable, so come with a specific position on AI reliability rather than generic enthusiasm.
  • → He mentors PMs — if the conversation touches on team or product org topics, ask what he looks for when he's developing junior PMs; it's a topic he cares about and will open him up.
  • → Reference the Twilio SIGNALconf talk if you've looked it up — he spoke about Noa.ai in 2025 and will notice if you've done the work.
  • → He's new to Booksy (joined June 2026) and working on Search and Agentic Discovery — questions about how he's thinking about the problem space will land better than assumptions about what Booksy already does.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on howler — he co-founded South Africa's leading nightlife ticketing and cashless payments platform in 2016, backed Ultra South Africa and Sonar Barcelona, and grew it to Series B. That's an unusual origin story for a search PM at a beauty-tech company, and he knows it.
  • Reference his Noa AI work at Docplanner — he led the product direction for an AI assistant built for doctors and spoke about it at Twilio SIGNALconf in 2025. His public posts argue that accuracy in healthcare AI isn't optional; he has a specific, defensible position on where AI judgment should and shouldn't be trusted.
  • Bring up Agentic Discovery — his LinkedIn signals he's working on this area at Booksy, and it sits at the intersection of search, AI, and marketplace personalization, which is where his last three roles have all pointed.

Discovery questions

  1. Howler ran ticketing and cashless payments for live festivals — what did that teach you about marketplace liquidity and trust that you've carried into consumer product roles since?
  2. At Docplanner, you were building an AI assistant for doctors where accuracy was the bar, not engagement. How do you think about that accuracy-vs-speed tradeoff differently now that you're working on search and discovery in a consumer context?
  3. Booksy is moving from a booking app toward a broader financial and retail platform — how does that product ambition shape the way you're thinking about what Search actually needs to do for merchants and consumers?

Avoid

Don't treat him as a generalist PM who's cycled through industries — he has deep founder experience and has led AI-specific product bets; surface-level product management frameworks will read as a waste of his time.

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Sources

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Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on August 19, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →