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Erel Sherman
Chief Product Officer at MatHem - Ex-Google - Ex-Spotify
Professional Background
Erel Sherman is a seasoned expert in product leadership, specializing in steering organizations through hyper-growth phases across multiple industries. His practical experience spans sectors such as e-commerce, fintech, mobility, music, and grocery shopping, where he has successfully developed comprehensive consumer (B2C) and business (B2B) products. Erel's multifaceted approach to product management intertwines the nuances of art and science, strategy and execution, creativity and data-driven insights, making the process of product development both exciting and effective.
In his role as the Chief Product Officer at MatHem.se, Erel has demonstrated exceptional leadership skills, guiding a diverse product organization that includes product managers, product designers, data scientists, data analysts, and user researchers. His ability to integrate various functional disciplines ensures that products not only meet market demands but also resonate emotionally with users. Previously, Erel was the Senior Director of Product Management at Spotify, where he played a pivotal role in driving product initiatives that contributed to Spotify's recognized success and growth in the music streaming space.
His career has also included significant contributions to Waze, where he served as Vice President of Product, as well as roles at Google as a Group Product Manager. Erel's global perspective, having lived and worked across the US, Europe, and Israel, enables him to approach product strategy with a rounded understanding of international markets and consumer behavior, enhancing his ability to deliver innovative solutions.
Education and Achievements
Erel's educational foundation is robust, with a Master of Arts in Public Policy from IDC and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Technion-Machon Technologi Le' Israel. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering and Information Systems from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. This academic background has equipped him with strong strategic, analytical, and executional skills that he has applied throughout his career.
His professional journey is marked by notable achievements, including his role as CPO & GM at ParagonEX and the various leadership positions he has occupied at different startups and established companies. In addition to leading product management teams, Erel has also been instrumental in overseeing account management, which reflects his versatility and commitment to ensuring that products not only launch successfully but continue to evolve post-launch.
Achievements
Erel Sherman's commitment to quality and excellence in product management is underscored by his involvement in key leadership roles at several successful organizations. While at Spotify, for example, Erel harnessed the power of data analytics to enhance user experience, ultimately contributing to the platform's industry-leading position in music streaming. At Waze, his innovative approach to product strategy was crucial in broadening the app's user base and refining its functionality to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of mobility and navigation.
Beyond his leadership within product organizations, Erel's entrepreneurial spirit shone through during his tenure as the co-founder and CEO of Peribanu, where he developed groundbreaking solutions that responded to emerging market needs. His experience at Natural Intelligence and Zlango further solidified his reputation as a forward-thinking leader in product development.
Erel's ability to balance analytical rigor with creative insight, alongside a profound understanding of consumer needs and behavioral psychology, sets him apart as a leader in the field. His knack for synthesizing diverse perspectives—from technical to emotional—enables him to craft products that engage users and drive business outcomes effectively.
Highlights
1300+ Israeli civilians were brutally murdered. Children, teenagers, women, men and elderly. Executed in their homes and beds, raped, set on fire, beheaded. Their bodies were mutilated. Mothers got their kids' execution videos from the terrorists that murdered them, using their kids' phones. Probably around 150 were kidnapped. This is evil at its worst. It is beyond war crime as it was carefully planned, from the get go, against civilians. It was not a collateral damage. It was the purpose. My heart is shattered into thousands of pieces. The free world has to understand that all fundamentalist terror in the world is connected and that fundamentalists adhere to a completely different set of values, that we cannot comprehend with our own. Their fanatic beliefs is also the reason why they operate from schools, hospitals and neighborhoods, using their own people as human shields and for cynical propaganda purposes. Make no mistake. Hamas doesn't fight for the Palestinians right for self determination. Hamas employed suicide bombing in 1993, murdering hundreds Israeli civilians, with the purpose to sabotage the signing of the Oslo accords, an historical agreement between Israel and the Palestines, aimed to create a path to end the conflict. They don't want normalization, they want chaos. They don't want freedom. They want the SHARIA laws. We are all their enemies. Terrorists normalized terror and we all got used to it, on a different scale in different countries, but over time, always to higher degrees. Today it is us. Tomorrow it is you. No country will or should allow such a massacre on their people. No one should allow a massacre on any human being. It is time to put an end to it and stand together against terror. The free world, democracies, the western world have to unite to eliminate terror before terror, fundamentalistic Islam and the SHARIA laws will eliminate us. Hamas is ISIS. Hezbollah is ISIS. Iran's leadership is ISIS. Russia of Putin is in the vicinity. To my fellow Swedish friends I want to say that it is all connected and that the terrorist threat level of 4 we currently have in Sweden for quite some time did not come from void. It all comes from the same seed of sheer evil. Seeds have a tendency to grow and not all seeds deserve growing. I call the tech industry and the business community, that at its core is all about working together to make our world a better place, to take a stand. We invest a lot of time and effort in our own companies in core values. While they are important, they are merely a tiny derivative of the universal values that we, the free world, share. When atrocities on such a scale happen in the world, when too many celebrate the massacre of innocent people and the burning of babies, something is severely wrong. We should be clear what values we stand behind and what role we take in making the world a better place to live in. #HamasIsISIS #HezbollahIsISIS #IranIsISIS #NoMoreTerror
