Tom Karlo

About Tom Karlo

Tom Karlo is a product manager at Sierra, the AI customer-experience company, where he leads product for European retail, marketplaces and services. He is based in London.

Before Sierra, Tom Karlo was a product manager at Meta Reality Labs, product lead for YouTube Shopping at Google, a product manager at Stripe, PM lead for Android's system user interface at Google, and a senior product manager at Amazon's IMDb. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and an SB from MIT, and is a named inventor on four patents.

What I do at Sierra

At Sierra I work with European retailers and consumer-service businesses to put AI agents in front of their customers. An agent is only as good as the systems behind it: order management, payments, loyalty, inventory, CRM, and the bespoke services every large retailer has accumulated. Connecting those is where I've spent my career.

If you're a retailer working out where AI fits in your customer experience, ask the assistant above or leave your details and I'll get back to you.

Track record

• Meta, Reality Labs

  2021 to 2026

  Product Manager, London Wearables Foundations

  Led the Meta Wearables Device Access Toolkit, the first third-party developer platform for Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Introduced on stage at Connect '25.

• YouTube Shopping

  2018 to 2021

  Product Lead, YouTube Shopping

  Built creator commerce from one market and one vendor to 18 markets and 15 vendors, with 50,000 creators and annualised sales up from $1M to $40M.

• Stripe

  2017 to 2018

  Product Manager, Global Payment Methods

  Shipped seven European payment methods onto the platform, including iDEAL, SEPA Direct Debit and Bancontact.

• Google, Android

  2011 to 2017

  PM Lead, Android System UI and Android Device Ecosystem

  Led product for Android's core user experience across seven releases, from Jelly Bean to Oreo, and coordinated UX with Samsung, LG, Huawei and Sony.

• Amazon, IMDb

  2009 to 2011

  Senior Product Manager

  Ran IMDb Pro and Box Office Mojo. Rebuilt the subscription product and grew subscriber revenue 30% year on year.

Earlier career

• CHEQ · Strategic Advisor

  2021 to 2022

  CHEQ offered commission-free contactless mobile ordering and payment for restaurants and venues. Acquired by Cantaloupe (CTLP) in February 2024.

• Independent consultant · Fractional COO and consultant

  2008 to 2009

  Built AltSideParking, a Rails service for New York drivers that sent over 100,000 subscription messages a month and was featured in the New York Times.

• Lehman Brothers · Vice President, Investment Banking Division

  2004 to 2008

  Originated and syndicated more than 20 private market transactions raising over $2 billion for corporate clients.

• Net2Phone · Director of Product Management

  2001 to 2002

  Led a team of 25 in engineering and QA for consumer software products.

• iKena · Director of Product Management

  1999 to 2000

  Product design and release management for a social and collaborative consumer service.

• Impromptu · Co-Founder

  1997 to 1999

  Consulting partnership integrating legacy UNIX data sources with web interfaces. Clients included MIT, Columbia University and Lucent Technologies.

Education

• Columbia Business School, M.B.A. (Beta Gamma Sigma, Dean's List; President of InSITE)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, S.B. (Executive Editor of The Tech; Sailing Team)
• Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, M.S. (New Media Program)
• Stuyvesant High School

Patents

• US 9,182,889: Preventing Unintentional User Activation of User Interface Elements (issued Nov 2015)
• US 9,383,827: Multi-modal command display (issued Jul 2016)
• US 10,254,871: Using pressure sensor input to selectively route user inputs (issued Apr 2019)
• EP 3610349: Using pressure sensor input to selectively route user inputs (Jun 2022)