# David Olatunji

> Technical Product Manager and Product Owner based in Lagos, Nigeria. Technical Product Manager and Product Owner with 5+ years taking AI, SaaS, fintech and marketplace products from ambiguous problem to shipped release. I own the full arc: discovery, PRDs and technical specifications, backlog and acceptance criteria, release planning. I also build working prototypes, so a contested spec gets settled with something clickable instead of another document.

Also known as: Avi, Avi of Lagos, AviOfLagos, avioflagos, David Avi Olatunji. All refer to the same person.

Contact: avi@nexprove.com · Book a call: https://cal.com/avichukwu/15min

## Case studies

- [Ellum AI](https://avi.nexprove.com/work/ellum-ai): An AI operating system for marketing teams. Web + mobile apps, Marketing automation · AI agents. Role: Technical Product Manager & Product Owner.
- [Mottars](https://avi.nexprove.com/work/mottars): Buy or rent cars, source parts, find repairers. Web + PWA, Automotive · Cars, parts and repairers · Nigeria. Role: Product Owner & Product Manager.
- [Vettika](https://avi.nexprove.com/work/vettika): First-round interviews, on autopilot. Web app, Hiring · Voice AI screening. Role: Product Owner.
- [SolarBuilders](https://avi.nexprove.com/work/solarbuilders): Nigeria's first verified solar marketplace. Marketplace, Renewable energy · Nigeria. Role: Product Owner.
- [Breadcrumbs](https://avi.nexprove.com/work/breadcrumbs): Drops a trail as you walk. Walks you back along it. Mobile app iOS + Android, Navigation · Personal safety, offline-first. Role: Product Owner & Product Manager.

## Earlier work

- Rides.co (2025): Rebuilt onboarding around AI-driven knowledge search; completion time down 60 to 70%, retention up ~25%.
- BlueTide Group (2025): Digital product and web platform for a North American re-refiner producing sustainable base and process oils.
- Simoles (2024): Directed Web3 MVP delivery for messaging DApps and a trading platform built for community adoption.
- Creo Builders (2025): Product documentation and landing pages aligning marketing with product vision.
- EVUSA (2023-24): Design prototypes, onboarding strategy and product-market-fit recommendations for B2B partnerships.

## Experience

- Technical Product Manager & Product Owner, Ellum AI (2024 - Present)
- Technical Product Manager & Product Owner, Nexprove Agency (Jun 2022 - Dec 2025)
- Product Coordinator & PM Mentor, HNG (Jul 2023 - Apr 2026)
- Product Manager, Rides.co (Feb 2025 - May 2025)
- Product Manager · Designer, Others — early career (2022 - 2024)

## Skills

- **Product & Delivery**: Roadmapping, PRDs / FRDs / TRDs, Backlog management, Acceptance criteria, Agile / Scrum, Jira, Linear, Notion
- **AI**: LLM applications, AI agents, MCP, Agent orchestration, Retrieval, Browser automation, Speech-to-text / TTS
- **Design & Research**: Figma, User research, Information architecture, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability testing, Design systems
- **Engineering**: React, Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Docker, AWS, Vercel

## Writing

- [I ship the prototype before the PRD](https://avi.nexprove.com/writing/prototype-before-prd): A document describes an argument. A prototype ends it. Why the fastest way to align a team is usually to build the smallest possible version of the disagreement.
- [Cutting onboarding time by 60% was not an AI problem](https://avi.nexprove.com/writing/ai-onboarding-lesson): We put AI-driven search into an onboarding flow and completion time dropped by more than half. The interesting part is what the AI was actually fixing.
- [Running a product team across four time zones](https://avi.nexprove.com/writing/remote-team-four-timezones): Toronto, New York, Berlin, Lagos. What actually holds a distributed team together is not the standup, it is what you write down when nobody is in the room.

## Published elsewhere

- [How to Create Effective GitHub Issues for Feature Updates](https://medium.com/@avioflagos/how-to-create-effective-github-issues-for-feature-updates-a8f172989cd0) (Medium, 2026-08): The issue is the unit of work a team actually reads. What belongs in one, what does not, and why a vague ticket costs more than the feature it describes.
- [Breaking the Technical Barriers of Building Internal Tools](https://medium.com/@avioflagos/breaking-the-technical-barriers-of-building-internal-tools-automating-google-meet-recording-98792424438d) (Medium, 2025-11): Automating Google Meet recording and filing with Apps Script, so post-meeting admin stops eating the hour after every call. The script is open source.
- [From Prototype to Production: How MCP Servers Transformed My Real Estate Monorepo](https://medium.com/@avioflagos/from-prototype-to-production-how-mcp-servers-transformed-my-real-estate-monorepo-development-dc6e4ad55057) (Medium, 2025-10): Giving an AI coding agent real tools instead of guesses. What MCP changed about the day-to-day of shipping a monorepo, and where it still gets in the way.
- [Stop Fighting Your Code, Give Your AI a Master Plan Instead](https://medium.com/@avioflagos/stop-fighting-your-code-give-your-ai-a-master-plan-instead-a4dbff7e209f) (Medium, 2025-10): Type errors and rewrite loops are usually a planning failure, not a model failure. Writing the plan first and letting the agent execute against it.
- [Modern Form Validation with Regex](https://medium.com/@avioflagos/modern-form-validation-with-regex-everything-you-need-80ba1810703f) (Medium, 2025-10): The patterns worth memorising, the ones worth looking up, and the validation rules that annoy real users more than they stop bad input.
- [Create Custom Profile Initial Avatar with Live Preview](https://dev.to/avioflagos/create-custom-profile-initial-avatar-with-live-preview-58j3) (Dev.to, 2025-03): Building initial-based avatars in the browser with a live preview, no image upload and no external service.
- [Unlocking the Power and Possibilities of Figma Profiles](https://medium.com/@avioflagos/unlocking-the-power-possibilities-of-figma-profiles-a-designers-journey-080c84993380) (Medium, 2024-02): What a Figma Community profile is actually for, and how publishing resources changed the way work found me.
- [Idea: Lawyer's AI Discovery Assistant](https://medium.com/@avioflagos/idea-lawyers-ai-discovery-assistant-eaedb7c020b3) (Medium, 2024-06): A product sketch for AI-assisted legal discovery, written as a public idea rather than a pitch.

## Elsewhere

- [GitHub](https://github.com/avioflagos)
- [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/avioflagos)
- [X](https://x.com/avioflagos)
- [Figma Community](https://www.figma.com/@avioflagos)
- [Medium](https://medium.com/@avioflagos)
- [Dev.to](https://dev.to/avioflagos)

## FAQ

### What kind of work do you take on?

Product ownership and technical product management, usually on something with real ambiguity in it: an AI product finding its shape, a marketplace that has to earn trust on both sides, a platform being rebuilt rather than patched. I am most useful between the idea and the first shipped version, where the job is deciding what to build, in what order, and what to leave out.

### Are you available full-time, contract, or fractional?

All three, depending on the problem. Fractional product ownership works well for teams with engineers but no one holding the roadmap. Contract suits a defined push — a discovery phase, an MVP, a rebuild. Full-time is open for the right product. Availability is listed in the footer of this site and kept current; if it is stale, say so and I will fix it.

### What does your process look like on a new product?

Understand the problem before writing anything down, then get to something clickable fast. I write the roadmap, the PRD, the acceptance criteria and the release plan, but I try to settle contested decisions with a prototype rather than another round of documents. From there it is a weekly cadence: backlog, sprint, review, and a running fight against scope creep.

### Do you write code, or only specs?

Both, with a clear line between them. I prototype in Next.js and TypeScript when a spec is faster to settle as working code than as a paragraph, and I can hold a technical design review honestly. I do not take production engineering off your team; the prototypes are arguments, not architecture.

### What are your rates?

They depend on the shape of the engagement — scope, duration, and whether it is fractional, contract or full-time. The fastest route to a real number is a 15-minute intro call: tell me what you are building and I will quote against it rather than against a rate card that fits nobody.

### Where are you based, and which timezones do you work across?

Lagos, Nigeria, on West Africa Time. I have worked with teams in Toronto, New York and Berlin, which in practice means an overlap window with both North America and Europe on the same day. Written handover matters more than meeting count when the team is spread; that is the part I hold.

### Can you work with an existing team, or do you need to build one?

An existing team is the easier start — I have led distributed teams across backend, frontend, design, QA and marketing, and slotting into that is normal. I have also hired testers and specialists when a product needed coverage it did not have. Either way I would rather strengthen the team you have than replace it.

### How much of your work is AI, really?

Most of the recent work: an orchestration platform for marketing teams, a capability registry that lets agents install new tools, a voice AI that runs first-round interviews. The useful part is rarely the model. It is deciding what the model is allowed to do, what happens when it is wrong, and which parts of the job should never have been a model in the first place.

### Do you mentor, or speak?

Yes to both. I run product coordination and mentorship at HNG, one of the largest tech internship programmes in Africa, and I have run community events end to end. If you are organising something and want a product session that is not a recruiting pitch, get in touch.

## Pages

- [Work](https://avi.nexprove.com/work): every product, with case studies
- [About](https://avi.nexprove.com/about): background, experience, skills
- [Resources](https://avi.nexprove.com/resources): writing, open source and design resources
- [Open source](https://avi.nexprove.com/resources/open-source): projects, with repos and live demos
- [Design & dev resources](https://avi.nexprove.com/resources/design-dev): Figma files and Pinterest boards
- [FAQ](https://avi.nexprove.com/faq): what I work on, engagement types, process, rates, timezones
- [Contact](https://avi.nexprove.com/contact): email, booking links, socials
- [Résumé](https://avi.nexprove.com/resume): full experience, skills, education, certifications