Ivan Mišić product · tech · ai

Twenty years.
One job:
ship things that work

I turn new business opportunities into propositions and products that teams can test, ship and scale across markets, without pretending every market is the same. I'm a Director at Deutsche Telekom, now working out what comes after connectivity. Started in tech support, moved through dev, now lead product. Or as I like to call it: making digital transformation sound less like a buzzword.

Started at Hrvatski Telekom in 2006 as the "have you tried turning it off and on again" guy. Moved to web dev, then product. Joined Deutsche Telekom in 2014. Built a single-codebase self-service app (one codebase, 10 EU markets) and a multi-tenant, end-to-end e-commerce platform. The pattern I keep seeing: digital transformation isn't a project. It's a way of operating, or it isn't anything.

Based in Zagreb. Close enough to the Adriatic to smell it, far enough to skip the tourist jams. Father, husband, and self-appointed BBQ specialist (my family politely disagrees on the rib rankings). The home lab stays on. The electricity bill confirms.

20 years · 10 EU markets · self-service app + e-commerce platform · 3x to 5x conversion
Say hello LinkedIn

I use the same rule for product work and AI tools: build something real before deciding what the technology is worth.

Career

2026 to NOW
Director · New Growth
Deutsche Telekom
New mandate: what comes after connectivity. The search for the next core business, beyond mobile, fixed, and broadband. The label's still loading. The work isn't: build the thing, then prove it.
2024 to 2026
2 years
Director, Product Management
Deutsche Telekom
Led product strategy and development for app and web products across 10 European markets. Owned the roadmap, led the people who lead the products. The spreadsheets got bigger. The code got further away.
2018 to 2024
6 years
Product Lead · eCommerce Europe
Deutsche Telekom
Built the first multi-tenant, end-to-end telco e-commerce platform. Fully automated sales journeys, 3x to 5x conversion uplift, multi-basket support, standardized checkout. Acquisition and retention in one platform instead of three.
2014 to 2018
4 years
Senior PM / Owner
Deutsche Telekom
Launched a single-codebase self-service app now live across 10 EU markets under multiple national telco brands. Coordinated business, design, and technical teams who all had different opinions. They still do.
2006 to 2014
8 years
Support → Web Dev → PM
Hrvatski Telekom
Started in tech support (yes, "have you tried turning it off and on again?"). Moved to Web Developer, then Product Manager. Built CMS/CRM platforms, led the MyT portal, launched bonbon's digital channels. Nine years, three careers, one company. Tech support teaches you something product school doesn't: most "feature requests" are workarounds for something else that's broken.

Operating principles

01
The whole journey matters.
Care more about how the complete experience feels than any single feature. You can nail every detail and still lose the user at checkout.
02
Design for the second market.
A well-designed product can serve new markets without rebuilding from scratch. Faster time-to-market, less duplication, more impact.
03
Speak both languages.
Tech support, development, product management. The path taught me to translate between customers, engineers, and executives. Someone has to.
04
Simple is hard.
Making things simple is harder than making them complex. Any team can add features. It takes discipline to say no.
05
Data informs, not decides.
Data guides decisions, but it can't predict what doesn't exist yet. For proven paths, measure everything. For new territory, experiment.
06
Technical empathy compounds.
Technology cycles went from five years to one. Early decisions matter more than ever. The technical details aren't noise to ignore.
07
Authority beats agility.
Alignment is not consensus. Make the call, document the reasoning, ship, measure, course-correct. Committees don't build products.
08
Digitalisation is a rebuild.
Adding a "digital" prefix to a department does not digitalise it. Rebuild the team, rebuild the tooling, rewire the incentives.
09
Ship boring things.
Ship the boring version this month. The elegant one is still stuck in review. Velocity is a feature, consistency too, being finished most of all.

AI use and corrections

Claude, Codex and I work through articles together, and they are remarkably patient with rough notes. I bring the topic, my experience and point of view, and the raw material, whether that is a draft, a recording or too many open tabs. They help me challenge the thinking, find gaps and shape it into an article.

This helps me cover more ground, explore more angles and publish useful work faster. I still decide what goes live, and I verify factual claims against the original sources or my own work.

If AI produces something substantial that affects how an article should be read, such as analysis, an image, audio or a transcript, I say so in the article.

If I've got something wrong, tell me through the contact page. Confirmed errors get corrected.