
Zafar R
5.0
(4)
AI Transformation & Strategy | 10+ years across Fortune 100 & Startups
Studied at Foster School of Business (Washington)
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
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

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

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.

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.

Product Manager, AI
Cruise
2018 - 2020

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)
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
Masters, Management, Supply Chain
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