Product Lead · 17 years as a builder, founder & manager
Andres Elizondo
About
17 years building products that ship.
Product lead for Identity Management at Salto, one of the world's top access control companies.
Built Salto IDM from 0 to 1: an Identity & Access Management platform for employees, visitors and contractors. Architected the SaaS platform as Senior Lead Developer, launched it globally as Technical Product Manager, and now own its strategy, roadmap, pricing, GTM and product portfolio as Product Lead.
Founded a venue pre-ordering startup that processed €210K+ in first-year orders. Signed the Johan Cruijff ArenA before COVID forced a responsible wind-down: the deepest product-market fit lesson of my career.
Building the AI-Native Framework as a side project exploring how product-led companies can run every function, not just engineering, as governed agentic workflows.
Experience
Companies I've built products for
Over a decade across startups, scale-ups, and global tech firms — shipping software, growing teams, and learning hard product lessons.
Salto Identity Solutions
CurrentUtrecht, The Netherlands
- Category lead. Own Salto's global Identity Management category. Leading strategy, roadmap, pricing, GTM and delivery to enterprise clients and partners across 40+ countries.
- Product portfolio. Designed the Salto IDM platform in 3 product layers: Platforms, Modules and APIs, aligning commercial strategy and technical architecture with global executives and partners.
- Operating model. Built a KPI framework spanning roadmap, quality, support, marketing and delivery, giving leadership data-driven visibility into ownership, priorities and performance.
- —Category lead. Own Salto's global Identity Management category. Leading strategy, roadmap, pricing, GTM and delivery to enterprise clients and partners across 40+ countries.
- —Product portfolio. Designed the Salto IDM platform in 3 product layers: Platforms, Modules and APIs, aligning commercial strategy and technical architecture with global executives and partners.
- —Operating model. Built a KPI framework spanning roadmap, quality, support, marketing and delivery, giving leadership data-driven visibility into ownership, priorities and performance.
- Global product launch. Ran the end-to-end Salto IDM launch, covering market research, pricing, GTM, sales enablement, documentation and stakeholder alignment.
- Enterprise readiness. Shipped and certified integrations with Access Control, HR, IT and Directory Systems, including SSO, RBAC, audit logs and customer-facing APIs.
- Business acquisition. Represented the technical and product perspective in Salto acquisition discussions, adapting the product for a multinational company with multiple business units.
- Built the platform. Designed, architected and coded the SaaS platform that became Salto IDM, helping shift the business from project-based sales toward a product-led model.
- Built the team. Ran technical hiring and onboarded developers onto the team, with two later becoming the team's Product Owner and Software Architect.
Bitz
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Founded a product from zero. Built the MVP, architecture and business plan for a mobile pre-ordering app for festivals, restaurants and venues.
- Commercial validation. Accepted into Startupbootcamp accelerator, won the Johan Cruijff ArenA "Change the Game" program, and was selected as a stadium technology supplier.
- Learned product-market reality. Processed €210K+ in first-year orders across events, restaurants and bars before COVID shut down the market. Closed the company responsibly under customer and partner SLAs.
CXO Software
Utrecht, The Netherlands
- Engineering. Responsible for the frontend of a financial-dashboard product using C# .NET and ReactJS.
- UX/UI. Worked with the design team to shape how the product looked, felt and worked.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
San José, Costa Rica
- Financial software. Managed the full project implementation for the ITO CenAm Financial Tool to manage confidential results for executives across HP's ITO Central America and Caribbean.
- Enterprise automation. Built the Reconciliation Audit System for SOX applications used in stock trading. It automatically reconciled, validated and flagged thousands of IT access control changes.
Microsoft
San José, Costa Rica
- Deployment automation. Supported Microsoft enterprise clients with large-scale product deployments, software automation, knowledge transfer and senior engineer enablement.
Selected Project
What I'm building right now
AI-Native Framework
“What happens when a company runs every function, not just engineering, as governed agentic work?”
An AI-native operating system for building and running product-led companies, exploring what happens when every function, not just engineering, runs as governed agentic work.
Education
Where I studied
University of Amsterdam
MSc Information Studies, Human-Centered Multimedia
2015 – 2016
Designing and Evaluating Iter. A human-centered carpooling application, studying how design builds trust, safety and belonging within a closed community during a UX design internship at Pernix.
Tecnológico de Costa Rica (TEC)
BSc Computer Engineering
2008 – 2014
Web Service Integration in N-Layered Software Architectures. Research focused on improving software scalability, maintainability and component reusability through the use of a Service Layer.
Skills & Credentials
What I bring to the table
Product
Strategy, roadmap, pricing, GTM, portfolio management, B2B and enterprise software.
Management
Business models, KPIs/OKRs, executive alignment, hiring, team building, partner channels.
Engineering
Full-stack development, C#/.NET, ReactJS, SQL, SaaS architecture and deployment, agentic AI.
Enterprise
SSO (SAML/OIDC), SCIM, RBAC, APIs, access control, identity management, integrations.
Certifications
Mind the Product — Product-led Courses. PMI — Project Management Certified (CAPM).
Languages
Hobbies
Get In Touch
Let's talk
Open to product, founding, or technical roles — and to conversations about agentic AI, product-led companies, and shipping real software.
[email protected]
linkedin.com/in/andelizondo
GitHub
github.com/andelizondo
Company
ae-software.net