Company: Prepared, New York City, NY
Company Description: Prepared was founded with a simple mission: improve public safety by unlocking the power of existing, widely available technologies to make emergency communications faster, more accessible, and more powerful. Our flagship software, Prepared Live, enables 911 dispatchers to livestream and receive photo, video, GPS location, and text from mobile callers in real-time.
Nomination Category: Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Product Development/Management Executive of the Year
 Nomination Title: Keshav Vasudevan
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the achievements of the nominee since 1 January 2021, OR written answers to the questions for this category? (Choose one):
A video of up to five (5) minutes
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video.
Video message from the CEO of Prepared detailing Keshav's achievements:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LIkQz3Gk6uhlgZd6yK7vbwo_SrvUuzEE/view?usp=sharing
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this first question: Briefly describe the nominee: his or her history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 190 words used.
As someone with an engineering, design, and business background, experience building and scaling multiple SaaS platforms from idea into successful multi-million dollar businesses, and a passion for leading product teams with empathetic accountability, Keshav has the perfect blend of what it takes to discover, design and deliver platforms that customers love and are willing to pay for.
What makes Keshav’s background interesting is his experience taking ideas 0-1. He’s come from humble circumstances working his way through the hallowed halls of NITT and Dartmouth all the while supporting his family. His entrepreneurial drive eventually led him to take three technology SaaS platforms across three different industries from concept to scale. You might have heard some of these products too - Swagger and SwaggerHub, two ubiquitous tools in API Design and Development used by millions; LoadNinja- a popular name in performance testing, and finally Prepared, a platform providing life-saving technology to 911 protecting 60+million citizens.
Keshav has honed the art of delivering on the holy grail of innovation - product-market fit, through rigorous and continuous customer discovery, empathetic stewardship of engineering, a deep understanding of technology, and a willingness to fail.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this second question: Outline the nominee's achievements since the beginning of 2021 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 247 words used.
Keshav leads the Product department at Prepared.
The Prepared platform allows 911 dispatchers to request callers livestream, send evidentiary photos and videos, and share GPS location data instantly with them during an emergency to improve situational awareness to save people's lives.
When Keshav joined Prepared, the company had a handful of accounts using the solution for free. He set out to monetize the platform and ensure product-market fit in order to accelerate massive adoption.
He did this through:
- Setting up a continuous discovery pipeline where product & design speaks to at least 5 customers and prospects every week while automating the market insight collection process across sales, customer success and support
- Associating insights with specific problem-solution areas & determining over time which problems were most worthwhile to solve for that results in the highest value and willingness to pay
- Delivering engineered solutions a reliable, secure manner
- Building out pricing and packaging through rigorous price sensitivity analysis
All of his efforts paid off. Prepared scores incredibly high in our product-market fit surveys with over 50% of 911 dispatchers scoring very disappointed in NPS surveys monthly (the product-market fit benchmark is 40%), the predictable monetization strategy he crafted has led to Prepared exceeding her investor revenue goals and growing our customer base to 700+ 911 dispatch centers across the US.
His efforts are also lauded by industry experts having been invited to speak on TV, be on 911 panels and speak about his product growth strategy at conferences.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this third question: Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the nominee's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 251 words used.
Keshav's achievements are unique & significant because of his ability to take an idea from 0-1 and turn it into a successful product business doing this not once, not twice but three whole times. And each time it wasn’t just taking the idea to market as a product but leading the platform's growth into a multi-million dollar venture.
What makes these achievements even more exciting is that each success was in a different industry that required him to not just have good product sense and intuition but deep domain expertise.
The platforms he’s played pivotal product leader roles in to develop, bring them to market and scale include SwaggerHub, Swagger, LoadNinja and Prepared.
Here’s a few examples of the press both his products and his work have garnered:
- Appearance on WFSB EyeWitness news channel nationally explaining the life-saving technology he manages
- Appearance in numerous technology podcasts and videos talking about API and infrastructure technology and performance testing practices
- His work being cited in multiple research papers and books
- His patent currently being employed in Prepared to provide accessibility technology to countless citizens in the country
- His work being featured across multiple press stories - examples below
- https://www.prepared911.com/news
- https://www.techtarget.com/searchsoftwarequality/news/252461221/SmartBear-LoadNinja-API-automates-performance-testing-for-CI-CD
- https://swagger.io/blog/api-development/swagger-wins-the-2016-api-award-for-api-infrastruc/
His journey from a simple, small-town boy to an executive reporting to the CEO while managing the product management, design and product marketing team while building his credibility as a technology & product expert is commendable.
- You have the option to answer this final question: Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 132 words used.
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