You have the licence, the DIFC office and a Dubai sales desk. I'm applying to build the engine.
Ramona Furter, applying for Growth & Marketing Manager, Dubai. 15+ years in marketing and product across Swiss venture studios and a CHF 100M+ e-commerce business, building acquisition engines in markets I entered from zero. These days I ship with AI daily, and I am planning my move to Dubai.
Your ad hands one person the active-customer number for the first 6 to 12 months. Verto's October 2025 Dubai launch made the news; since then the UAE has had no Gulf event, no UAE customer story, and a sales desk working the pipeline alone. One hire and one quarter buy two plays done properly, so the real week-one decision is which two. My pick is preselected. Change it and see what each quarter delivers.
Pick any two plays.Worked example, illustrative figures
target accounts engaged
qualified conversations
new active customers by month 6
This application, from the research to the page itself, was built with the AI toolchain I use daily, Claude Code among it. The same leverage goes into campaign production, and it is how one growth hire keeps up with a distributed global team.
Why me, honestly
1
Acquisition engines built from zero, with receipts
Your ad asks for a proven record of measurable customer acquisition. On WePractice's founding team I built the go-to-market from nothing: 1000+ client matches in year one, growth to 10 locations and 170+ customers, two funding rounds closed. Before that, Sparrow Ventures paid me to enter unfamiliar business models fast and build the growth engine anyway.
2
Data-driven and hands-on, tools included
At Ifolor I owned e-commerce for a CHF 100M+ business and lifted conversion 9% and checkout step rate 15% through research, A/B testing and analytics. HubSpot and PostHog are not on my CV yet; my pattern is picking up a new stack every couple of years, and today I build my own marketing automation with n8n and LLM agents rather than waiting for a specialist.
3
The UAE gap, stated plainly
You ask for deep, practical understanding of the UAE market. Mine is researched, not lived: I am Swiss, planning my move to Dubai, and I will not pretend otherwise. What I bring instead is a career of entering markets I did not know and making the number move, plus fintech-adjacent ground: at Brixel I owned the partnerships with UBS and Baloise that drove the company's growth.
Leads AI-driven business models from opportunity sizing to launch. Cut time spent on sales by 30% through automation, and proposal feedback time by 90% with a synthetic pitch-check avatar I built.
Aug – Dec 2025
In between jobs and own ventures
smedium · Pedal Peak
Built smedium to first clients, grew the Pedal Peak cycling platform, and went deep on AI tooling: own LLM tools, prompt engineering, AI-supported content production.
Oct 2024 – Jul 2025
Senior Product Manager, Lead E-Commerce
Ifolor Group, Zurich
Owned the e-commerce ecosystem and strategy for a CHF 100M+ business, reporting to C-level. +9% conversion, +15% checkout step rate.
Jun 2023 – Sep 2024
Lead Project Manager
Brixel, Zurich
Owned the partnerships with UBS and Baloise that drove growth; main bridge between senior client stakeholders and the product team.
Mar 2020 – May 2023
Marketing & Growth Lead, Founding Team
WePractice (Sparrow Ventures / Migros Group)
Built the full go-to-market of a health venture: 1000+ client matches in year one, 2 funding rounds, growth to 10 locations, 23 people and 170+ customers.
Sep 2019 – Sep 2022
Growth & Venture Builder
Sparrow Ventures, Zurich
Built growth and go-to-market for several internal startups, from validation to scale-up: experimentation to lift conversion and cut acquisition cost.
Jan 2017 – Aug 2019
Intrapreneur, Innovation
Die Mobiliar, Bern
Took market pilots from MVP to launch (Smide, XpertCheck, Lizzy), built market-entry strategies and ran the experiments that steered marketing and product decisions.
2005 – 2016
Commercial and product-marketing foundation
Promena · Cruspi · Domaco · Kuoni · Bridgestone
Trade marketing, product management and accounting: the numbers discipline under everything since.
Education: BBA Business Administration (Zentrum Bildung, Baden) · CAS Digital Marketing (HWZ Zurich) · CAS Innovation (BFH Bern). Languages: German native, English fluent, French conversational. Swiss citizen, available with notice.
About me
I am Swiss, based in Zurich, and planning my move to Dubai with my partner. In 2025 I went bikepacking through Togo and Benin, paying my way in CFA francs, which taught me more about what moving money in West Africa actually feels like than any report. Verto started with the Naira. I understand why that problem is worth a company.
Outside work I ride bikes and run Pedal Peak, a cycling platform I built end to end and filled with 331 hand-ridden routes across 12 countries. It is also my proof that I ship.
