Amy Yuan

Built to build.

I started as an engineer at Carnegie Mellon — not because I wanted to write code forever, but because I wanted to understand how things actually work. That technical foundation is still the most useful thing I bring to any product conversation. I can sit with an engineering team, understand the tradeoffs, and make build decisions that don't blow up three sprints later.

After CMU, I joined Procter & Gamble as a Process Engineer and then Product Manager on the global Pantene team — a $2Bn+ business spanning China, Europe, and the US. I learned what "scale" actually means: 152 product launches, 23 global initiatives, and a regulatory change that could have derailed a multi-billion dollar brand — but didn't, because the team moved fast and aligned well.

From global brands
to scrappy startups.

Wharton gave me the strategic vocabulary — Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Marketing — and an MBA exchange at INSEAD gave me global perspective. But the real education came after: joining S'well as their very first PM, with no process, no templates, and a mandate to build a product discipline from scratch.

I built the company's first consumer testing platform, launched 22 new products in a single year, and oversaw the fastest-selling product in the company's 10-year history — 100k+ units in year one. All 100% on-time, on-budget. I also got an industry award for it, which was nice, but the real win was proving that speed and rigor aren't opposites.

Adobe followed — building GTM strategy at enterprise scale across Magento and Adobe Experience Manager, training 100+ salespeople across EMEA and North America, and quantifying a $1.5Bn market opportunity from scratch.

Building 0 → 1 at
600 sites.

Gopuff was the most demanding product environment I've worked in. I joined via the acquisition of RideOS — a Sequoia-backed Series B startup — and over three years, grew from Senior PM to Head of Product at a company valued at $15B.

I built the company's first real-time order lifecycle management platform from 0 to 1. MVP in one week. Full productization in a month. Scaled from one team to 600+ sites across the US and UK, reducing P90 delivery times over 60 minutes by 80%. I also owned the entire driver mobile app — and led a 20-person cross-functional team that delivered $30MM+ in annual cost savings through AutoDispatch, Chain of Custody, and Dynamic Pricing.

The thing that made it work wasn't the technology. It was knowing how to sequence, how to de-risk, how to run a pilot that actually translates to a nationwide rollout. That's what I teach founders now.

Why AY Partners.

The founders I started advising — through First Round Capital, Lunar Accel, and independently — kept asking the same question: "Can you just help us do this?" Not a deck. Not a framework. Just someone senior enough to own it and experienced enough to not break things in the process.

AY Partners is the answer to that question. I work with Series B to growth-stage startups that need fractional CPO-level leadership, 0 → 1 product sprints, or GTM readiness — depending on where they are. Every engagement is designed to leave your team stronger than when we started.

I've also mentored 50+ underrepresented early-career product leaders and aspiring founders. Giving people access to the kind of senior guidance I had to fight for early in my career is one of the most important things I do.