Financial Services
Technology, Information and Media
Active

John Rainey

Product Leader | B2B Platforms and SaaS | Startups and Scaleups | Regulated industries

About Me

Executive product leader and NED with 17+ years building B2B businesses across regulated industries in the UK and US. I've evolved organisations from being project based to product led during rapid growth and accelerated early stage startups from ideation to commercial validation. Often as the first product person partnering with founders, I've worked across venture and angel backed startups and SMEs. While the environment has ranged from legacy technical debt to greenfield launches, my priority has remained building collaborative teams that deliver sustainable commercial growth. I've led platform modernisation, US market expansion, and multi-year organisational transformations as companies grew from 500 to 1300+ employees. I have deep sector expertise in insurance, with additional work across SaaS, HRTech, security, and drones. This breadth of experience allows me to quickly adapt to new sectors. Having navigated the messy middle of growth from early stage chaos to established operations, I bring calm pragmatism to senior leadership conversations and provide boards with guidance that's actually implementable.

Jurisdiction

United Kingdom | United States

Notable Employer

  • Head of Product at Simply Business
  • Associate Director at AT&T

Experience

Seniority LevelDirector
Years of Experience15-20 years
Current StatusActive
Operating Partner and AdvisorGallos Technologies
2024 - Present

Partnered with 3 founders (including co-founding one) to accelerate B2B hardware and software businesses from ideation to commercialisation within 18 months, all achieving commercial validation through significant funding rounds or enterprise contracts

Head of ProductNotableSimply Business
2018 - 2023

● Led US market entry by coordinating cross-functional teams in the UK and US to internationalise the platform and product offering, partnering with Commercial, Underwriting, Operations, and Marketing to drive sustainable user growth ● Designed, led, and evangelised multiple organisational restructures to transform from project-based to product-led operating model, supporting company growth from ~500 to 1300+ employees, while managing 10+ reports including people managers ● Defined the global platform strategy in collaboration with CPO and CTO to enable faster product delivery, improve scalability, and support multi-market operations

Head of ProductBenivo
2017 - 2018

Coached Product and UX teams to increase NPS by 40+ points through data-driven UX optimisation, onboarding redesign, and behavioural engagement improvements that increased daily active usage

VP ProductKrowd9
2013 - 2017

● Owned full product lifecycle for mobile apps across multiple platforms, from concept and specifications to engineering direction, user analytics, and product discontinuance ● Created GTM strategy and revenue model with CEO to release a mobile app on four platforms (iOS, Android, J2ME, Blackberry) in multiple markets (sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America)

Development ManagerNCC Group
2012 - 2013

Oversaw and delivered critical platform modernisation projects for rebuilding the key components underpinning all SaaS commercial services worth ~£90 million revenue p.a.

VP EngineeringCeros
2011 - 2012

Led Product, Engineering, and offshore QA teams through the organisational transformation from an internal tool to an independent B2B SaaS startup

Associate DirectorNotableAT&T
2000 - 2007

Created and led a 20+ person 24x7 Network Operations Center team that provisioned and maintained a new region wide VoIP service

Education

Degree of Electrical EngineeringGeorgia Institute of Technology
1993 - 1999
Masters of Business AdministrationLondon Business School
2007 - 2009

Skills

Core skills0
Languages2

Languages

English
English (British)