Jay Sharma

About Jay Sharma

I\'ve never been good at accepting \"that\'s just how it works.\" At Agoda, I found a checkout bug on day two — by actually using the product. Nobody had instrumentation on it. Turned out 1% of all traffic was silently failing. At Indeed, I signed up as a job seeker on day one. My recommendations came back: Dental Hygienist, Accountant, Medical Director. At Amazon, I found that Canada — 25% of a country\'s population — was one regulatory misstep away from being cut off entirely, and nobody owned the fix. In each case, the problem wasn\'t invisible. It was normalized. I\'ve spent 20 years in marketplaces and fintech — at Indeed, Amazon, Agoda, and PayPal — building the things that needed to exist but didn\'t. Relevance systems. Payment infrastructure for customers with smartphones but no credit cards. Hybrid AI pipelines that protected $5B of business while unlocking 18% revenue growth. I\'ve also been a founder, so I know what it feels like when every decision is yours to own and there\'s no safety net. My contrarian belief: the highest-leverage product move is usually killing something, not building something. I shut down a $2M/month email channel at Indeed that leadership was protecting. Every quality metric improved the day we turned it off. After an intentional sabbatical, I\'m looking for my next chapter — CPO or VP Product at a growth-stage or mid-size company where the problems are real, the stakes matter, and there\'s still something important left to build. If that sounds like where you are, let\'s talk. j•••@kodesphere.com

Experience

1. Advisor Fractional Cpo & CTO

   Independent

   Jan 2023 — Present

   I advise founders, CEOs, and product and growth leaders on high-stakes product and AI decisions in marketplaces and fintech.The work is not about adding features or chasing new technology.It’s about making fewer, higher-quality decisions where the cost of being wrong compounds quickly.I’m typically brought in when:– AI adoption is creating noise instead of clarity– Relevance, trust, or monetization is breaking at the system level– Teams are scaling faster than their decision frameworks– Leaders need experienced judgment before committing to irreversible pathsMy role is to:– Pressure-test product and AI strategy before it becomes expensive– Identify where AI creates real leverage and where it introduces fragility– Clarify incentives, signals, and metrics across the system– Provide steady, senior judgment during moments of scale, transition, or resetI work in short diagnostics, ongoing advisory, or fractional CPO/CTO roles, depending on what the situation requires.

Education

• University of Michigan - Stephen M. Ross School of Business

  Master of Business Administration (MBA)

• Maharshi Dayanand University

  Bachelor of Science (BS)