Zafar R.

Zafar R

5.0

(4)

AI Transformation & Strategy | 10+ years across Fortune 100 & Startups

Foster School of Business (Washington) Logo

Studied at Foster School of Business (Washington)

Stealth AI Startup Logo

Works at Stealth AI Startup

Available tomorrow at 2:00 PM UTC

Questions? Start chatting with this coach before you get started.

Zafar's Coaching Offerings

Custom hourly · $70/hr

Get help with AI Readiness Assessment, AI Strategy, and .

Zafar’s AI Strategy & Transformation Qualifications

Coaches professionally

Experience level: Vice President

60+ people coached for AI Strategy & Transformation

I am a technical product manager with 10+ years of experience in Silicon Valley, working across hypergrowth startups and established Fortune 500 companies. I have spent the last two years buidling an AI-native operations platform for a $1B/year private equity portfolio company, working on the hard problems of embedding AI into the daily rhythm of a real operating business. Before that I was at Walmart, where I automated enterprise workflows and turned them into software products sold to customers like Apple and Home Depot. Earlier in my career I worked on self-driving at Cruise, now part of General Motors. Alongside my day job I have advised several founders on AI strategy for their companies, and I would genuinely enjoy helping you think through how to make your operations AI-native. I also coach PMs who want to sharpen how they talk about AI work in interviews and develop real judgment about which AI products are actually worth building.

Zafar can help with:

AI Readiness Assessment

AI Strategy

AI Insights Dashboard

Fractional AI Strategist

AI Tools & Integration

AI Roadmap Development

AI Agents

AI Product Innovation

Team AI Upskilling

AI Automation

Freelancing

View all of Zafar’s categories

About Zafar

I've been building AI and platform products for over a decade, at places where the work had to ship and stay shipped. At Cruise, I worked on the ML data platform and autonomy toolchain behind self-driving cars. At Walmart, I led the charge to commercialize Walmarts internal operations, into a stand alone product, working directly with partners like Apple and Home Depot. Most recently, I led product for an AI-native operations platform at a multi billion dollar PE-backed AI infrastructure company, stitching 25+ enterprise systems into a single agentic layer running more than $1B of datacenter operations. Over the last two years, I've also had a lot of conversations outside my own company. Founders from seed through Series B. VPs at Fortune 500s. Operators in industries that rarely show up in AI headlines. The same pattern kept surfacing. They understood what AI could do. What they couldn't figure out was where to start, what to build first, and how to avoid spending six months on the wrong thing. That gap is what I work on now. Big companies can spend millions standing up internal AI teams and still miss the mark on their first few bets. Most builders don't have that runway or headcount. Whether you're a PM trying to move into AI, a founder deciding where to place your first real investment, or a functional leader who needs to get from idea to working prototype without an army of engineers, I can help you get there faster and with fewer wrong turns.

Why do I coach?

I coach because the asymmetry bothers me. Large organizations can afford to run six-month AI discovery programs that produce slide decks instead of products. The people I keep meeting, founders, functional leaders, PMs, operators, don't have that runway. They need to figure out the right first move, and they need to be right. I've been lucky to build AI products at companies that gave me budget, strong engineering teams, and time. That kind of environment teaches you what actually holds up in production once the demos wear off. If I can hand that compressed learning to someone about to make their first real AI bet, and save them a quarter or two of wasted motion, that's work I find extremely rewarding.

Work Experience

Stealth AI Startup Logo

Principal Product Manager

Stealth AI Startup

2024 - Present

Stealth AI infrastructure company building GPU-powered AI cloud and services. Backed by $XB in funding. Building an AI native platform to manage enterprise operations with Agentic AI and LLMs. Product Lead for Commerce and Operations. 100+ XFN team. Product Strategy, Product Management and +2 skills

Walmart Logo

Product Lead, Commercialization and Automation

Walmart

2021 - 2024

Product Lead at Walmart Labs (now Walmart Global Tech). Building 0 to 1 products to generate the next billion dollar revenue stream for Walmart.

The RealReal Logo

Lead Product Manager

The RealReal

2020 - 2021

The RealReal (NASDAQ: REAL) is an e-commerce marketplace for luxury goods. In 2021, $1B+ worth of goods were bought on TRR's platform.

Cruise Logo

Product Manager, AI

Cruise

2018 - 2020

Bird Logo

Product Management

Bird

2018 - 2018

Scoot Networks was an early electric mobility pioneer that was acquired by Bird in 2019. I product managed a portfolio of our business operations software and led the team that shipped the Scoot G2.0.

Education

Foster School of Business (Washington) Logo

Foster School of Business (Washington)

Master of Science - MS , Management Science

Merit Scholarship Recipient Final Capstone Project: Demand forecasting and product consolidation strategy for an $18MM program for Alaska Airlines.

Foster School of Business Logo

Foster School of Business

Masters, Management, Supply Chain

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Zafar R.

Zafar R.

5.0

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