Ivana Polim

The Venture Cooperative is the most accessible onramp to venture capital. The free educational program and inclusive community make Laconia's investments, processes, and learnings accessible for the next generation of early stage investors. Cooperative's participants participate in Laconia's investment processes, collaborate on due diligence, hear perspective from industry leaders, share their expertise within the community, and collaborate with early stage founders.

In this role, I led the transformation and scaling of the Forward-Deployed Product Management team during a pivotal period. I hired and scaled the team, established concrete operating practices, fostering collaboration across functions, and building a high-performing, customer-focused organization. The team is responsible for technical implementation, customer-driven product roadmap, and ongoing technical, data, and product advisory across all Ribbon customers.

At Coinbase, I managed two functions: the Product Launch team, which built internal tools and processes for launching features for Institutional customers, and the Voice of the Customer team, which delivered strategic customer insights to cross-functional stakeholders. As a manager of managers, I focused on leadership and strategic alignment, driving initiatives that improved feature rollouts and customer feedback integration.

As a product owner, I developed and launched a new suite of solutions on top of Symphony core platform that enhanced workflow automation for financial services clients. Partnering with cross-functional teams, I ensured product development aligned with customer requirements and business goals, delivering innovative solutions to market and driving adoption.

In this role, I built Symphony’s Global Customer Success function from the ground up, scaling the team to 12 members across NY, London, Paris, HK, and Singapore. By aligning engagement strategies with customer goals, I drove significant growth in active users and helped customers implement API-driven workflows. I also defined the team’s roles, responsibilities, and strategies to meet ambitious adoption targets.

I led a cross-functional growth team to execute strategies that unlocked exponential user growth. Collaborating with product, data, engineering, account, and marketing specialists, I drove initiatives to grow platform adoption and API integration for customers, resulting in significant user expansion across key markets and use cases.

- Helped design a market entry strategy into a lubes market for a leading petroleum company in Africa - Built data table and charts to model current markets of OEMs to support the M&A activity of a specialty lubricants company - Created a global bio-based lubricants presentation for ICIS Pre-Seminar workshop in London - Supported the writing of a company article about bio-based chemicals industry

- Managed applications for summer 2013 service projects - Conducted interviews for project leaders candidates - Planned winter leadership retreat for future project leaders and alumni - Managing and liasing with Executive Commitees - Mentoring and managing current project leaders on summer projects

Empowerment of Disabled Youths through Educational and Emotional Supports: - Managed and led a team of 15 college students to conduct a service leadership project in Cambodia - Led daily team briefing, debriefing, and brainstorming sessions for both service and leadership activities to ensure goals were reached - Led a leadership workshop on fundraising and elevator pitch for 20 high school students

- Analysed a comprehensive range of relevant competitors' engine oil products and leverage knowledge for future formulations and sales engagement with competitors - Built a new platform/system to predict field test results for industry standards' qualifications using 50 years of historical field tests data, platform is being adopted now - Engaged with leaders in various departments to obtain information and angles of products and formulations

- Developed a life cycle management plan for the liquid metal battery's end of life - Designed and proposed processes associated with decommissioning batteries at end of life - Filed 3 patents for the processes I designed for battery decommissioning, including recycling and disposal methods that are in compliance with EPA standards

Worked on process scoping and scaling up of a new deposit control additive: - Designed a process flow diagram and defined variables for additive scale up - Performed laboratory scale experiments and small-plant scale experiments to scope the process, and successfully produced the product at a high yield - Improved current additive performance by 30%

- Improved the stability of microwell array platforms which are used for functional analysis of rare cells in complex cell mixtures, for the application of endometriosis - Conducted experiments to reduce delamination of hydrogel microwell from glass substrates - Designed protocol for trials of anchoring hydrogel microwell platforms to membranes that mimic liver tissues - Contributed to 1 pending publication

- Managed web platform for ticket sales and advertisement, monitor daily payments through different platforms and checked for scams, resolved payment failures or rejections with appropriate providers - Managed ticket sales inquiry and weekly mass marketing - Liaised with other organizing teams to get details required for mass emails

- Conducted fetal Mesenchymal Stem Cell (fMSC) plating efficiency study on hydrogel microwell platforms - Performed microwell fabrication and cell seeding - Performed experiments to find optimal microwell dimensions and cell seeding density for fMSC.

- Designed and synthesized advanced fluorescent probes for zinc and application in complicated biological systems, e.g. brain - Presented finding updates to the members of the research group