# Nikita Yampolski

> Co-Founder, CPO and CTO · 0-to-1 product builder · MSc in AI
> Switzerland · Builder & Doer
> Website: https://yampolski.net

Twenty years of shipped products, as executive, founder or hands-on individual contributor, manager and engineer.

Senior product leader with hands-on engineering expertise across B2B/C SaaS, FinTech, MedTech, MarTech and commodity trading platforms. Helps entrepreneurs and founders build successful, scalable products — from MVP to growth — with modern LLM & AI stacks, PLG and audit-ready compliance.

## At a glance

- 20 years shipping software products
- 16 companies that trusted his leadership
- 15 0-to-1 products launched
- 1M MAU reached organically (PLG, SEO, ASO)
- 5 working languages · 3 expat locations · 20+ references available on request

## Current focus (2025 — present)

### One Mental Hub — Co-Founder, CPO & CTO (Swiss Made Software)
Comprehensive mental health platform with quick, evidence-based assessments, personalised insights and expert recommendations. Connecting patients and clinicians, cutting waiting times from 9–12 months to early screenings and blended digital therapy covering PHQ-9, GAD-7, burnout, WSAS, ISI and ADHD (ASRS v1.1). Certified Swiss Made Software.
https://onementalhub.com/about/

### Spirit X Solutions AG — CPO & CTO (CE Class IIa · MDR)
University of Zurich spin-off building a CE Class IIa digital mental health platform for organisations — screening, assessment, triage and treatment — partnering with WHO, SRK and ETH. Built a CE-certified clinical research platform with University Hospital Zurich (USZ) and launched the next-generation B2B2C SaaS in under 6 months, phasing out legacy systems while optimising costs by over 70%.
https://spirit-x.ch/en/about/

### Mental Health Score (MHS) — Inventor (patent-pending)
A composite 0–1000 wellness metric integrating validated clinical assessments with ecological momentary data.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/401942301

### Agentic AI in clinical care — Hands-on builder
Building agentic AI systems with Anthropic, OpenAI and Mistral AI — a rolling-context mental health chatbot for patient engagement, plus AI-powered clinical data analysis and intervention suggestion for patients and doctors.

## Growth leadership

- $5B+ offer value generated via commodity trading SaaS & marketplaces
- 400% growth delivered during COVID-19
- 1M MAU reached through PLG, SEO and ASO
- 6x product-led growth after a full product turnaround
- 15+ FTEs in cross-functional teams led
- #1 AppStore ranking — product mentioned by Tim Ferriss

Awards & credentials: S&P Rising Star 2020 · WEF Technology Pioneer 2019 · Red Herring Top 100 · IPMA Agile Project Management · Swiss Made Software

## Fractional CPO & CTO services

### Embedded — Fractional CPO / CTO
Embedded product and technology leadership, 1–3 days a week. Strategy, discovery, delivery rhythm, hiring and hands-on engineering — plus a successor plan so the role does not stay fractional forever.
Typical shape: 3–9 months · For pre-seed to Series B teams

### 0 → 1 — MVP build
From idea to a shippable, validated MVP with a modern LLM and AI stack. Customer validation, scope discipline, and a go-to-market you can actually run after launch.
Typical shape: 8–16 weeks · For founders without a product org

### Scale & fix — Product turnaround & scale
Stalled product, unclear roadmap, or growth that flattened. Restructures the product operation, re-opens PLG/SEO/ASO growth loops and makes the platform audit-ready for MedTech or FinTech scrutiny.
Typical shape: 3–6 months · For teams of 5–50 people

### Full-time — Full-time CPO / CTO
Open to full-time executive product and technology leadership roles for the right mission, team and stage.
For scale-ups and established companies · Switzerland-based, hybrid or on-site

## AI & research

Educated in AI. Still researching it.

MSc and BSc in Computer Science from the Donetsk State Institute of Artificial Intelligence, plus Harvard CS50 — the foundation for audit-ready system design.

Hands-on with Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral and Cursor: agents, pipelines and multilingual LLM research. Locally hosted models including Qwen 3.6, DeepSeek-R1 (Distilled), Mistral Small 3 and Moonshot AI's Kimi K3.

Stack: TypeScript, NodeJS, Swift, SwiftUI, Kotlin, PostgreSQL, Supabase, AWS and Azure — with a background in algorithmic trading (C/C++, NASDAQ) and Domain-Driven Design.

### Publications

1. **The Mental Health Score (MHS): A Composite Wellness Metric Integrating Validated Clinical Assessments and Ecological Momentary Data** (ResearchGate) — Invented by Nikita Yampolski; patent-pending. A 0–1000 composite metric integrating PHQ-9, GAD-7, WSAS and daily mood EMA for longitudinal wellness tracking. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/401942301

2. **Language-Dependent Communication Strategies in Multilingual Large Language Models: Russian vs. English Response Patterns in Mistral AI** (Zenodo) — How language selection in multilingual LLMs shifts communication strategy well beyond translation accuracy. https://zenodo.org/records/18183880

## Track record

### 2025 — present · One Mental Hub (Switzerland) — Co-Founder, CPO & CTO · Swiss Made Software
A mental health platform giving people quick, evidence-based assessments with personalised insights, and giving clinicians and organisations the patterns behind the data. In operation today, replacing 9–12 month waiting times with early screening and blended digital therapy.
- Certified Swiss Made Software
- Covers PHQ-9, GAD-7, burnout, WSAS, ISI and ADHD (ASRS v1.1)
- MVP built from the ground up and validated with real customer segments
- Agentic AI stack on Anthropic, OpenAI and Mistral, with a rolling-context clinical chatbot
- Invented the Mental Health Score (MHS) — published, patent-pending

### 2025 — present · Spirit X Solutions AG (Switzerland) — CPO & CTO · CE Class IIa · MDR
University of Zurich spin-off building a CE Class IIa (MDR) digital mental health platform for organisations — from early screening and triage to treatment pathways — in partnership with WHO, SRK and ETH.
- Built a CE-certified clinical research platform with University Hospital Zurich (USZ)
- Owned CE Medical Device (cat. 2a, MDR) compliance and secure health data handling
- Launched the next-generation B2B2C SaaS in under 6 months
- Phased out the legacy product and offshoring teams, optimising costs by over 70%

### 2021 — 2025 · Product Rocket (Switzerland) — Head of Product, CPO & CTO (full-time & fractional)
Launched 10+ SaaS products and mobile apps (#1 in the App Store) from zero-to-one with PLG, SEO and ASO growth. Scaled Brame AG's MarTech B2B platform 6x for major European brands and WealthArc AG's FinTech wealth platform under FinSA/FIDLEG, leading teams of 15+ FTEs.

### 2017 — 2021 · Open Mineral AG (Switzerland) — Head of Product / CPO
Turned around the base-metal concentrates B2B trading marketplace: $5B+ in total offer value, 5M tons of raw metal concentrates, and 400% growth in the first three months of COVID-19. Reported directly to the CEO and executive board.

### 2015 — 2017 · Spitch AG (Switzerland) — Global Development Director (NLP, AI & ML)
Shaped the B2B business and product offering for pioneering in-house speech recognition and proprietary LLM technology, serving AXA, Spotify, SBB and financial and automotive customers.

### 2013 — 2015 · Yandex Europe AG (Switzerland) — Group Head & Growth Projects Leader (B2B)
Helped establish a new Swiss international sales office and a partner network across the UK, France and the Nordics, reaching $150K MRR while leading operations, business development and big-data projects with clients such as Air France, Hotels.com, Momondo and Nespresso.

### 2012 — 2016 · part-time · unadox (Switzerland) — Co-Founder & Board Member
Built an online claims management SaaS cloud-based platform for the health and insurance domain, pioneering a paper-heavy market. Built and led board, executive, operations and partnership functions.

### 2006 — 2013 · Swisscom (Switzerland) — Senior Project Manager, Mobile Telecom Delivery & Integration
Delivered 10+ integration and development projects with $1M+ P&L each, serving 200M GSM users worldwide across Malaysia, Singapore, Switzerland, France and CIS. Rebuilt processes and led the company to ISO 9001:2008 certification.

### 2003 — 2005 · Thales (ex-Gemalto) — Project Manager
Built high-performance over-the-air (OTA + SS7) solutions and pioneered Mobile Money products.

### Early career · various clients · Others — Software engineer & project lead
Selected early-career builds and consulting across telecom, finance and trading.
- High-frequency trading platform in C++ with machine learning elements for signal generation and execution
- Algorithmic trading systems (C/C++, NASDAQ) and telecom integrations

## Regulatory & credentials

Built to pass audits:

- **CE Medical Device** — Cat. 2a MDR certified platform development for healthcare
- **FinSA / FIDLEG** — Compliance for FinTech wealth management platforms
- **ISO 9001:2008** — Led a company to certification, reporting to CEO & CTO
- **Swiss Data Protection (nFADP)** — Swiss federal data protection compliance for health and SaaS products
- **GDPR** — EU data protection, privacy by design and cross-border data handling
- **EU AI Act Compliance** — Risk classification, documentation and conformity for AI systems
- **Swiss Made Software** — Drove the Swiss Made Software certification for One Mental Hub

## FAQ

**What does a fractional CPO / CTO engagement look like?**
Typically 1–3 days a week for 3–9 months, embedded in the team. Owns product strategy, discovery and delivery, and stays hands-on in the codebase and the AI stack. Delivers an operating rhythm, a roadmap the team believes in, and a successor plan so the role does not stay fractional forever.

**Are you available, and where do you work from?**
Based in Switzerland, working on-site in CH and remotely across Europe, Asia/Singapore and the UK. Takes on a small number of parallel engagements; start dates depend on current load — use the contact form for real availability.

**What is your expertise in 0-to-1 product building?**
Built and launched over 10 products from scratch — cloud, SaaS, web and mobile — using a modern LLM and AI stack from MVP to scale. Scaled products to 1M MAU through organic growth (PLG, SEO, ASO) and led cross-functional teams of 15+ FTEs as both CPO and CTO.

**What is your experience with AI and LLMs?**
Hands-on with Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral and Cursor. Builds agentic systems including a rolling-context mental health chatbot and AI-powered clinical data analysis with intervention suggestions, and works with locally hosted models such as Qwen 3.6, DeepSeek-R1 (Distilled), Mistral Small 3 and Moonshot AI Kimi K3.

**Can you work in regulated environments like MedTech and FinTech?**
Yes. CE Medical Device (cat. 2a, MDR) certification for healthcare platforms, FinSA/FIDLEG compliance for FinTech wealth management, Swiss Data Protection (nFADP), GDPR, EU AI Act readiness, Swiss Made Software certification and ISO 9001 certification leadership.

**What is the Mental Health Score (MHS)?**
A composite wellness metric scaled 0–1000 that integrates PHQ-9, GAD-7, WSAS and other validated clinical assessments with ecological momentary assessment (EMA) daily mood data. Invented by Nikita Yampolski; published on ResearchGate and patent-pending.

## Elsewhere

- LinkedIn (4.6K+ followers): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikitay
- ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nikita-Yampolski
- Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/nikita-yampolski
- Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/search?q=metadata.creators.person_or_org.name%3A%22Yampolski%2C%20Nikita%22&l=list&p=1&s=10&sort=bestmatch
- Photography: https://foto.yampolski.net/

## Contact

Available for CPO, CTO, fractional product leadership, or advice on building scalable products from scratch.

- Contact form: https://yampolski.net/#contact
- Legal: https://yampolski.net/privacy-terms-impressum
- Based in Switzerland · working on-site in CH and remotely across Europe

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*Last updated: 2026-08-12*
*For the most current information, visit https://yampolski.net*