Barakat Olatinwo
Product Marketing · GTM · Growth · AI + Fintech

I turn complex products into clear stories, launch systems, and measurable adoption.

I build the commercial layer between technical products and the people who need to understand, trust, and use them.

Product marketing and growth operator across AI, fintech, payments, and emerging technology — from Microsoft Surface to founder-led startups. Vanderbilt MBA with a computer engineering foundation.

Portrait of Barakat Olatinwo
Barakat Olatinwo · Nashville / US
$70Bmarket opportunity model for Microsoft Surface
$500K+delayed payment volume recovered at WeWire
4,000+businesses onboarded at Lazerpay
10Kusers acquired at Bitnob in six months
30%MRR increase from a new Tabs Global client I helped onboard
Featured case studies

From insight to commercial motion.

The work changes by company and context — including one independent strategy exercise. The operating pattern stays consistent: understand the customer, sharpen the wedge, build the launch or growth system, measure adoption, and feed what I learn back into product.

Tabs Global · Founder’s Office, Strategy & Growth Expansion · Aug 2026–Present

Building the early GTM and expansion engine for a global payments infrastructure company.

I work directly across founder-office priorities: GTM strategy, infrastructure partnerships, sales, hiring, and customer acquisition. The role is intentionally broad — moving from strategy memo to partner outreach to sales conversation to team-building.

50+infrastructure partners identified and contacted
2first Account Executives hired from the hiring strategy I built
+30%MRR contribution from a new client I helped onboard
  • Developed GTM and market-expansion strategy for a global payments infrastructure business.
  • Built and executed infrastructure-partner research and outreach across the payments ecosystem.
  • Created the hiring strategy for the first commercial hires and helped hire the first two AEs.
  • Joined customer sales conversations and supported onboarding through to commercial impact.
Founder’s officeGTM strategyPartnershipsSalesHiring
Work samples are intentionally heavily redacted. Confidential commercial assumptions, partner identities, regulatory analysis, pricing, internal targets, and company-specific recommendations have been removed.
Microsoft Surface · 2025
$70B
market opportunity model + customer segmentation
Market sizingPersonasPositioningAI workflow
Product Marketing Manager Intern

Segmentation and AI-enabled commercialization at global scale.

I worked at the intersection of customer insight, market sizing, and field enablement for Microsoft Surface.

  • Built a bottom-up TAM and revenue opportunity model to identify high-value customer segments and inform resource allocation and pricing discussions.
  • Developed customer personas and competitive insights to support international GTM planning.
  • Engineered an LLM-powered, persona-based content workflow that became a repeatable asset pipeline adopted by PMM and field teams.
Market sizingSegmentationPersonasAI workflowsSales enablement
WeWire Africa · 2023–2024
$500K+
delayed payment volume recovered after diagnosing funnel friction
Merchant interviewsSQL / funnelProduct fixActivation
Senior Product Marketing Manager

Turned payment-funnel friction into a product and growth opportunity.

For a cross-border payments platform serving African businesses, I paired GTM ownership with merchant research and hands-on analytics.

  • Built a payment-funnel analytics dashboard and surfaced critical drop-off points, leading to cross-functional fixes that recovered $500K+ in delayed payment volume.
  • Translated merchant interviews into product requirements for the analytics roadmap, supporting the platform as processed volume scaled to $1B.
  • Led customer research and GTM work for a B2B vertical that drove a 40% increase in user acquisition within the segment.
Funnel analyticsCustomer discoveryB2B GTMProduct strategy
Lazerpay Finance · Growth Marketing Manager · 2021–2023

Made stablecoin payments legible to businesses — then built the system around adoption.

I led commercialization across launch strategy, onboarding, product education, lifecycle content, developer marketing, and ecosystem partnerships.

4,000+businesses acquired
30%+active merchant adoption
$2.6M+processed within nine months
  • Owned GTM for Checkout and the customer app from positioning through launch and adoption.
  • Ran multi-channel product marketing across content, PR, lifecycle, sales enablement, and developer education, increasing engagement 45% and API adoption 30%.
  • Led product demos, workshops, conferences, and partner activations that expanded ecosystem relationships and brand recognition.
0→1 GTMStablecoinsDeveloper marketingLifecycle
Bitnob · Product Marketing Manager · 2020–2021

Built the narrative and growth loops for unfamiliar digital-asset products.

As an early product marketer, I helped create the commercial layer around crypto products that required both education and trust.

10Kusers in six months
$1M+monthly transaction volume, up from <$10K
+70%active users through referral-led growth
  • Owned GTM for three digital-asset products, including a Bitcoin-backed lending product.
  • Used behavior and transaction data to shape growth experiments and product priorities.
  • Designed the first referral model and supporting activation loops.
PositioningProduct launchesGrowth loopsCrypto
Qernel · Independent GTM Strategy Exercise · 2026

Defined a narrow beachhead for an agentic quantum development environment.

Using public product and market information, I built a commercialization hypothesis around Qernel’s existing CLI and Zoo: become the fastest trusted path from a quantum paper or mathematical specification to a runnable, testable, shareable project.

  • Prioritized research builders and quantum software teams where the pain is concrete and reachable, rather than starting with a broad enterprise category claim.
  • Built a product-led motion across acquisition, activation, retention and expansion, with trust expressed through tests, benchmarks, provenance and human review.
  • Structured the first 90 days around 15–20 interviews, 5–8 design partners, canonical tasks, proof assets, repeat usage and private-team willingness-to-pay signals.
  • Defined the north star as median time from source artifact to validated, runnable prototype, supported by activation, test-pass, second-project and sharing metrics.
Market intelligenceICPDeveloper GTMPositioningPLG90-day plan
Full strategy available on request. Independently developed from public information and explicitly presented as a hypothesis to validate with the team.
Additional experience

Range without losing the through-line.

Not every role needs a full case study. These experiences add useful evidence around regional expansion, technical storytelling, and community-led growth.

Valora · Apr–Jul 2024

Regional Marketing Manager, Africa

Owned Valora’s marketing presence across Africa: managed influencer relationships across micro, mid-tier, and large creators; built community distribution through outreach and partnerships; and contributed local market and regulatory context to regional execution.

Mangrove AI · 2026

Technical product storytelling

Translated algorithmic-trading and digital-asset infrastructure into white papers, website messaging, and social narratives for institutional and developer audiences. Planned event exhibitions to support visibility and qualified commercial conversations.

ScaleMyHustle · 2019–2020

Community-led growth

Built lifecycle, referral, content, and partnership programs that increased community membership 150% in six months and supported the evolution into a paid learning platform.

How I work

Three operating principles.

01

Start with the customer and the problem.

I want the buyer’s language, the user’s friction, and the real trigger before I write positioning or build a campaign. Research is not a pre-launch ritual; it is an operating input.

02

Turn insight into a system.

A useful GTM strategy becomes repeatable: a narrative, launch cadence, funnel, sales motion, content engine, partner loop, or AI-enabled workflow that other people can actually use.

03

Measure adoption, not activity.

I care about what changed after the launch: activation, usage, repeat behavior, transaction volume, pipeline, revenue, or operating leverage — not how many assets were shipped.

Recommendations

What people I’ve worked with say.

“She takes her time to deeply understand product before embarking on marketing, positioning and communications efforts.”
Olabinjo Adeniran · CRM & Lifecycle Marketing · worked with Barakat
“Barakat demonstrated exceptional skills as a growth manager, consistently delivering results that exceeded expectations.”
Njoku Emmanuel · CEO, Ultramarkets · managed Barakat directly
“There is one thing that stands out — she gives her all to deliver.”
Feranmi Ajetomobi · Director of Growth · worked with Barakat across projects
Speaking & community

Building trust in public, not only behind a deck.

Panels, workshops, community programs, and ecosystem events have been part of how I explain emerging products, build relationships, and create distribution.

Barakat Olatinwo speaking on a panel at the No-Code Tech Summit
Panel conversation · No-Code Tech Summit
Tech in Heels Ladies Talk Tech speaker flyer featuring Barakat Olatinwo
Tech in Heels · Web3: Preparing for the New Age
Web3 Lagos Conference speaker flyer featuring Barakat Olatinwo
Web3 Lagos Conference · Product Marketing
DigiClan Connect speaker graphic featuring Barakat Olatinwo
DigiClan Connect · Web3 Meets Marketing
Barakat Olatinwo with other speakers on stage
Ecosystem events as commercialization funnels
About

Technical enough to go deep. Commercial enough to make it matter.

Barakat Olatinwo outdoors

I’m Barakat — Bee to friends. My career has repeatedly centered on one question: how do you help people understand and trust a complex product enough to use it, recommend it, or buy it?

2026–Present
Tabs Global · Founder’s Office, Strategy & Growth ExpansionGTM, partnerships, sales, hiring, customer acquisition, and founder-office strategy.
2026
Mangrove AI + Vanderbilt MBATechnical narrative for institutional/developer audiences; MBA in strategy and operations.
2025
Microsoft SurfaceMarket sizing, segmentation, international GTM, and AI-enabled commercialization workflows.
2024
Valora · Regional Marketing, AfricaInfluencers, communities, regional presence, and market context.
2023–24
WeWire AfricaCross-border payments GTM, merchant research, funnel analytics, and product strategy.
2021–23
Lazerpay FinanceStablecoin payments GTM, onboarding, content, developer education, lifecycle, and partnerships.
2020–21
BitnobDigital-asset product launches, early user acquisition, and referral-led growth.
Foundation
B.S. Computer EngineeringObafemi Awolowo University — the technical base behind how I work with product and engineering teams.
Barakat Olatinwo · Product Marketing · GTM · GrowthSelected confidential work is redacted or available only in conversation.