Role: Product Owner & Co-Founder | Timeline: 2022 – 2023 | Team: 2 (PO +Full-Stack Developer)
1. The Vision & The Problem
The Gap: Thousands of expats, students, and professionals worldwide struggle with high-quality academic and professional German text editing. Traditional agencies were slow and opaque in pricing. The Concept: Deutschtextland (a fusion of Deutschland + Text) was conceptualized as a dual-sided, automated marketplace linking customers with vetted native German editors.
2. Product Discovery & Strategic Challenges (The “How”)
As the Product Owner, I single-handedly managed the strategic and operational lifecycle of the MVP
The Marketplace Algorithm: Designed the logic and automated backend algorithm for order-matching, calculating optimal delivery lead times, and dynamic pricing tiers per page/word.
UX/UI & Dashboard Architecture: Wireframed and mapped the user journeys for three distinct user types, leading to the deployment of 3 custom dashboards:
1-Customer Dashboard (Order upload, real-time tracking, secure payment)
2-Editor Dashboard (Order bidding, deadline alerts, quality score matrix)
3-Admin Panel (Global order overview, dispute resolution, financial tracking)
Legal & Operations: Authored the comprehensive Terms of Service (ToS) and structured the freelance contract frameworks for native German editors.
The Recruitment Paradox: Overcame severe chicken-and-egg marketplace issues by successfully onboarding reluctant, high-caliber native editors through targeted value-proposition pitches.
3. The Ultimate Product Challenge: The AI Disruption (November 2022)
The Crisis: Right as we prepared for the final launch, OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. The core value proposition of human-only editing was suddenly challenged by free, generative AI.
The Pivot & AI Strategy: Instead of retreating, I led a strategic pivot. We evaluated integrating LLMs into our product lifecycle: utilizing AI for the initial macrostructure check, while retaining human native editors for the critical nuance, local context, and technical precision—creating a hybrid, high-efficiency editing
4. Technical Architecture & External Roadblocks
Tech Stack: Managed a lean development cycle using Python (Backend) and deployed via Heroku (Cloud Platform).
The Uncontrollable Roadblock: Despite establishing a legal entity in Turkey to bypass unjustified international sanctions against Iranian nationals and integrate secure online payment gateways, sudden global banking restrictions and geopolitical compliance issues blocked our payment architecture, preventing a full scale international launch.
5. Key Product Management Takeaways (What I Learned)
Resilience in Disruption: Learned how to rapidly re-evaluate a product roadmap when an unexpected tech revolution (GenAI) shifts the entire industry overnight.
Lean Execution: Proven capability to act as a cross-functional leader, bridging the gap between deep technical code (Python/Heroku), legal compliance, and user centric design with zero fluff.
Emails Terms of Service 9- Tutorial page 8- Revision page 7- Online Document Editing for longer texts & sth from other parts 6-My Account, edited Text page 5-Pricing page 4-User page after logging 3-Login with google 2-Landing Page 1 Notes Contract_Robert Finalization Linkedin