S.M. Hasan Naqvi
Who they are
S.M. Hasan Naqvi is Lead Product Management Consultant at Product People — a Habib University Electrical Engineering graduate who earned an 80% merit scholarship, graduated 2nd in his major, and has consulted for clients spanning JetBrains, Back Market, DeepL, and the World Health Organization.
Person
Hasan graduated from Habib University with a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering on an 80% merit scholarship, finishing 2nd in his major — an unusually technical foundation for a career that moved decisively into product. He did a cultural exchange at Florida Gulf Coast University in 2017 and later studied as a Visiting Scholar in Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Stanford. Early career took him through engineering and early PM roles in Pakistan — a Software Engineering internship at Code for Pakistan, then Product Manager at United Bank Limited and Afiniti — before he relocated to Europe and climbed through embedded PM roles at Smallpdf (Senior PM), Back Market (Senior PM), Doozer Real Estate Systems (Product Coach), and a Lead PM stint at AVIV Group, followed by JetBrains (Lead PM, 2024–2025) and a brief spell at MusicHub in 2025. He rejoined Product People as Lead Product Management Consultant in July 2023, having already done a Senior Consultant run there from June 2022 to July 2023; he also served as Interim Head of Strategy & Go-To-Market and as Product Advisor to the World Health Organization. The through-line is breadth-as-a-feature: banking, real estate, developer tools, circular commerce, music — each engagement deepens a consulting toolkit rather than a single vertical. He writes regularly on LinkedIn and Medium on stakeholder management, AI in product orgs, roadmapping, and PM hiring, and describes himself as a 'process nerd.' He panelled at Unleashed Summit 2025 and moderated a B2B vs B2C PM panel in 2024, and sits at the centre of a product manager community he puts at over 60,000 members.
Company
Product People GmbH operates as a plug-and-play consultancy, placing interim Product Managers and Product Owners into companies to drive cross-functional work and fill leadership gaps. The broader PM consulting market it serves is being reshaped by a tension the firm's clients feel acutely: a 2026 Productboard CPO Survey found that 85% of product leaders are investing in AI tools, yet only 2% are prioritising talent development — exactly the gap a consultancy like Product People is positioned to address. The 2026 product landscape is further complicated by economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and a talent shortage, all of which increase demand for flexible, on-demand PM expertise.
Market
Product People operates in the on-demand product leadership and PM consulting space, where the competitive dynamic is less about head-to-head software rivals and more about the decision to hire interim consultants versus build in-house capability. The broader product management tooling market around it (Productboard, etc.) is consolidating, and the 2026 shift toward AI-evaluated products and 'product explainability' is changing what clients need from consultants — less roadmap admin, more judgment on AI integration and cross-functional orchestration.
Network
No named edges were returned in the probe, so specific relationship ties aren't surfaced. What is visible from his public activity is that Hasan co-appeared on panels at Unleashed Summit 2025 and Product Weekend Croatia with other product leaders, and hosts Product People community events in cities including Amsterdam. His client network spans eBay, DeepL, Back Market, Babbel, Smallpdf, JetBrains, and the World Health Organization.
How they likely show up
- Cross-sector consulting track (banking → real estate → developer tools → circular commerce → music) → comfort operating without deep domain context; likely onboards fast and asks sharp scoping questions early.
- Self-described 'process nerd' who publicly writes about breaking down systems → probably shows up to a first meeting having already mapped the process landscape and will want to discuss structure, not just goals.
- Active LinkedIn and Medium writer on stakeholder management and AI in product orgs → comfortable being the visible voice in a room; likely responds well to being asked for a take and will give a concrete one.
- Electrical Engineering degree with merit scholarship, 2nd in major → analytical baseline; expect him to interrogate assumptions with data or first-principles reasoning rather than accepting received wisdom.
- Mixed tenure shape — multiple short stints at clients alongside longer consulting engagements → optimised for rapid impact and exit, not long institutional build; may be impatient with slow-moving consensus processes.
- Community of 60,000+ PMs and repeated panel appearances → values knowledge-sharing at scale; likely to frame individual problems in terms of broader PM practice patterns.
Conversation tips
- → Reference a specific LinkedIn post — he publishes frequently and specifically (e.g. his piece on the cost of noise in stakeholder management). He'll know immediately whether you read it.
- → Ask about a specific client context (JetBrains, Back Market, WHO) — he's done genuinely varied work and will have sharp war stories; pick one that's relevant to your context.
- → Engage his 'process nerd' framing directly — if you have a messy process problem, name it plainly. He'll engage more on a concrete breakdown than on abstract strategy.
- → Don't treat him as a generalist-for-hire; his framing is that breadth is the point — acknowledge the range of sectors he's operated across and ask how the patterns transfer.
Toolbox
Openers
- Open on the WHO advisory work — Product Advisor to the World Health Organization is an unusual credit for a product consultant, and the contrast with his developer-tools and circular-commerce clients (JetBrains, Back Market) opens a natural conversation about what PM craft looks like when the stakes and constraints are completely different.
- Reference his 2025 Unleashed Summit panel on product leadership and AI — he's been publicly thinking about AI's role in product orgs at a time when (per the 2026 Productboard CPO Survey he likely knows) 85% of product leaders are investing in AI tools but only 2% are prioritising talent development. That gap is squarely in his lane.
- Lead with the 'process nerd' self-description from his LinkedIn — he used it to describe how he breaks down complex systems, which gives you an immediate, credible anchor to ask about how he diagnoses a broken product process in the first week of a new engagement.
Discovery questions
- Across your consulting stints — Smallpdf, JetBrains, Back Market, WHO — what's the single most common breakdown you walk into, and what does fixing it actually look like in week one?
- You moderated a B2B vs B2C PM panel in 2024 and you've worked in both — where do you think the craft genuinely differs, and where is that distinction overrated?
- Your community sits at 60,000+ PMs — what signal are you hearing from that group right now about how AI is changing what a PM actually does day-to-day, versus what the think-pieces are saying?
Avoid
Don't open with generic claims about AI transforming product management — he has been actively panelling and writing on this topic with specifics, and a surface-level observation will read as unprepared.
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Sources
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Try Brief →Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on August 10, 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 →