Senior product manager · Lisbon, Portugal
Write it down. Then ship it.
I’m Nadia Ferro. For eight years I’ve turned messy problems in payments, health and B2B software into small, testable bets, and shipped them with teams I’d work with again.
8 years in product
40,000 merchants served
Lisbon, UTC+0
Open to lead PM roles
Most product problems are writing problems. If I can’t explain a bet on one page, we aren’t ready to build it.
I start with the people who use the product: five interviews before the first ticket, and more after launch. Then I write a one-page memo the team can argue with, and we ship the smallest thing that could prove us wrong.
Right now I lead checkout and payouts at Ledgerly. Before that, patient booking at Harbor Health, offline sync at Fieldnote and my first dashboards at Tram.
2014
Economics
A degree in Porto and weekends running a café floor, which taught me more about queues than any course.
2017
First product job
Analyst at Tram. I built dashboards, started asking why the numbers moved, and someone made me a PM.
Now
Ledgerly
Leading checkout and payouts for 40,000 small businesses, with a team of eight and a memo for every bet.
In product
Roles
Four product teams since 2017, from analyst to senior PM.
Ledgerly
Senior Product Manager · 2023–now
3 years
Own checkout and payouts for 40,000 small businesses. I lead a team of six engineers and two designers.
Current role
Harbor Health
Product Manager · 2021–2023
2 years
Took patient booking from a phone line to three taps, then took it from one clinic to forty.
Fieldnote
Associate Product Manager · 2019–2021
2 years
Note-taking for field teams. I shipped offline sync and learned to say no to custom requests.
Tram
Product Analyst · 2017–2019
2 years
A transit app for three cities. I built the dashboards the product team still opens every Monday.
Before product
Earlier
Research, a café floor and a lot of listening.
Freelance research
UX researcher · 2016–2017
1 year
Usability studies for startups in Lisbon and Porto. Forty interviews and one lesson: watch, don’t ask.
Café Arrábida
Shift manager · 2014–2016
2 years
Ran the floor on weekends while I studied. Still the best training in prioritising I’ve had.
What I’m good at
Skills
The parts of the job I’d hire myself for.
Discovery
Interviews, jobs to be done, prototypes
8 years
Five user interviews before the first ticket, and more after launch.
Writing
Memos, specs, release notes
8 years
Every bet starts as a one-page memo the team can argue with.
Strongest
Experimentation
A/B tests and holdouts
6 years
Designing tests, reading them honestly and calling them early when they lie.
Analytics
SQL, funnels, cohorts
9 years
I write my own queries so the data team can work on harder problems.
What I use
Tools
Tools change. These are the ones open on my screen today.
Figma
Flows and wireframes
7 years
Enough to sketch a flow and argue it through with designers, never to replace them.
Linear
Planning and delivery
4 years
Cycles, projects and a backlog that fits on one screen.
Amplitude
Product analytics
6 years
Funnels and retention charts, shared with the whole team every week.
Notion
Memos and decision logs
6 years
Where the memos live, with every decision and the reason behind it.
Where I studied
Education
Economics first, then the people side of software.
MSc Human–Computer Interaction
Universidade de Lisboa · 2016
2 years
A thesis on why people abandon forms, which turned out to be a career.
BA Economics
Universidade do Porto · 2014
3 years
Behavioural economics, statistics and a lot of coffee.
Lisbon, where I work from. Happy to overlap with New York mornings.
“If it isn’t written down, it wasn’t decided.”
A note pinned above my desk since 2019
Let’s talk.
Tell me a little about the role or the problem. I read everything and reply within a day, usually with questions.
Roles
Open to senior and lead product roles in payments, health and B2B software.
Advice
I give an hour a month to early founders and new PMs. Send a question to hello@nadiaferro.com.
Speaking
Talks on product writing and discovery, at meetups and conferences in Europe.
Location
Lisbon, UTC+0. Remote or hybrid, with travel for kickoffs.
Not a fit
Agency work and contracts shorter than three months.