I make the customer count.

Accountable today for the customer experience behind €400M GMV at Conrad Electronic, across seven product teams. Ten initiatives shipped there last year carried €30.3M of EU revenue impact, nine of them A/B tested.

Get in touch See the work

Based in Munich. German and Italian native, English business proficient.

Nico Santangelo, portrait in a dark blazer against a dark slate background

The record, in four numbers.

€30.3M

incremental EU revenue at Conrad in one year
400+

user interviews run leading to actionable insights
4

teams built
11

people led across different teams

Where the work was done.

Retail, travel, insurance, HR tech, comparison and media, mostly mid-transformation.

Employers, 2006 to today

Conrad Electronic

German technology retailer serving businesses and consumers across Europe, from components and measurement equipment to factory automation. Trading since 1923.
conrad.de
FTI Group

Europe's third largest tour operator, more than 11,000 employees across over 90 subsidiaries. Filed for insolvency in June 2024.
Smart InsurTech

Operates SMART INSUR, the platform connecting insurers, brokers and distributors in the German insurance market.
smartinsurtech.de
Experteer

Munich career marketplace for senior and executive roles, connecting headhunters and recruiters with pre-selected candidates.
experteer.de
CHECK24

Germany's largest comparison portal, covering insurance, energy, finance, telecoms and travel.
check24.de
CHIP Digital

Consumer technology publisher and one of Germany's largest tech media brands, with 23 million monthly active users at the time.
chip.de

Consulting clients through N+

DevelopX

Start-up builder that helps companies build, transform and scale digital business models from idea to market rollout. Part of TruVenturo.
developx.com/de
IMERO

Checks and translates food and cosmetics labels for global markets, pairing AI with expert validation of declaration compliance.
imero.io
Ryd

Connected car service for paying at the fuel pump from a phone, available across Europe.
fleet.ryd.one/privatkunden
VEOMO

Independent mobility consultancy that plans and runs mobility concepts for real estate, cities and companies.
veomo.com
Rankscale

AI visibility platform. Monitors and improves how brands appear across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
rankscale.ai

What I build

Four parts that get the right things built, and keep them earning.

The same four in every company I have built in.

Operating model

How a company decides, and how it finds out. I get the change agreed above the teams before anyone is asked to work differently. Every role gets a written scope and a named accountability. Goals are written so the teams who were not in the room can still read them. And nothing enters a backlog without evidence behind it. Without this, the other three stay on slides. With it, they become how the company works.

Product discovery

Research is infrastructure first and headcount second. I build the panel, the repository and the recruitment path before anything else. That is what turns a study into a two-day question, and it is what gets the small questions asked at all. Then I teach the teams to run their own. A research function smaller than the company it serves cannot work by taking requests.

Design system

A component layer is an organizational commitment first and a technical one second. I make the case before anything else, in the terms the business already uses, and the system gets funded as a product: a team, a backlog and a number it has to show. Who owns it, and who is allowed to change it, is written down before the first design token exists.

Product design

Evidence is worth what it changes. Every initiative starts from a written problem and a hypothesis anyone can look up. It moves through prototypes built on the design system and ships behind a test, so what comes back is a number. I set the craft standard in critique, and I argue it in front of the people who ship the work.