Business & Product Leader · AI Transformation Specialist
The AI revolution is here, and now is the time to embraced the opportunity for your business. Hi, I'm Russell Holt founder of Walking Fish, an agency that helps businesses put AI to work and unlock real tangible results.
15+
Years experience
5
Companies built & sold
50%
Ops Velocity improvement
100+
Solutions Deployed
Services
I provide businesses customised solutions that leverage technology and Ai to radically improve their operations. From benchmarking your current Ai capabilities with an Ai Audit, to Ai solution design and delivery, through to ongoing fractional CPO & COO roles.
Your team understands their Ai capabilities and gaps, they are empowered to make decisions, and have a shared Ai-based roadmap tied to business outcomes, not a backlog of random ideas. Priorities are cleary align to value and business impact, stakeholders are aligned, and delivery moves faster.
Your company's AI features move into production faster, with more clarity and conviction. Your team is more confident with clear safety guardrails, performance evaluations, continuous observability & monitoring, and Ai governance. Your team knows how to run successful AI projects, not just talk about it.
Repetitive workflows inside your business are handled by Ai agents. Your people are elevated to higher-order work, not data entry & processing. Your new process tooling has 10x your business value and doesn't need a dedicated engineering team to maintain.
Work
Real outcomes from real challenges: product transformation, crisis leadership, and AI implementation. For more details, contact me for a chat.
Vygo
Challenge
Sales had already promised AI features to customers, but the company had zero AI expertise, no infrastructure, and a six-month deadline.
Action
Led the transition to upskill the team to the new way of working, shifted discovery to vibe-code prototypes for 48-hour customer feedback loops, and integrated AI tooling into the SDLC including evals and monitoring for product quality through observability, automated tech support through AI bug triage.
Outcome
Vygo
Challenge
The company was stuck in a reactive, sales-led model and customers were churning: endless meetings debating small details, no shared roadmap, and no line of sight from features to business value.
Action
Led the transformation to a Product Operating Model starting with a strong vision and product strategy, followed by mapping clear user journeys. Opportunity Solution Trees were used to map customer pain to business objectives and solutions, built a Now/Next/Later outcome-based roadmap, and replaced status meetings with async Loom updates and a centralised Notion hub, ensured there was conviction and clarity at all times for the team to move quickly and confidently.
Outcome
Vygo
Challenge
Product decisions were based on anecdotal sales feedback and opinion. There was no centralised source of customer insight, usage data, or competitive intelligence.
Action
We built a product insight engine using qualitative and quantitative analysis to give clarity & transparency to product decisions: AI-transcribed customer calls piped into Notion, Mixpanel instrumented for behavioural analytics, competitor analysis mapped and clear product differentiators uncovered, and implemented product-led customer discovery loops to validate the product strategy.
Outcome
3Crowns / Spectur
Challenge
A data breach exposed that the company was relying on self-certification and AWS's shared responsibility model: no formal security accreditation, no internal security team, and clients demanding answers.
Action
I took end-to-end ownership: onboarded a cybersecurity firm for gap analysis, launched org-wide security training, engineered new SOPs, ran mock audits, and achieved full ISO 27001 certification with permanent governance.
Outcome
Spectur
Challenge
Post-acquisition, two companies had separate technology stacks, siloed engineering cultures, and no shared roadmap, with the board expecting immediate financial value from the merger.
Action
Mapped both tech stacks end-to-end, established a weighted scoring framework (value vs. complexity vs. risk) to prioritise integration, ran cross-functional workshops to build bottom-up ownership, and led with a quick-win networking merger to build trust before tackling harder application-layer work.
Outcome
Coastalwatch
Challenge
The business relied almost entirely on advertising revenue, but increasing competition from Google and Facebook was compressing margins and making the model unsustainable. A historically free consumer platform needed to become a scalable subscription business.
Action
Led end-to-end creation of Coastalwatch Plus, from customer research and TAM sizing, through a platform rebuild on microservices architecture with CRM, identity, and automated payments, to a scarcity-driven GTM with capped trials. Assembled a cross-functional delivery model, owned continuous funnel optimisation, expanded to adjacent segments, and extended subscriptions across iOS and Android with in-app purchasing.
Outcome
Story
My unique journey is my superpower - it gave me a rounded experience across the business value-chain and I'm confortable talking macro-econmics in the C-suite and also rolling my sleeves up and vibe-coding with the engineering team. I'm passionate about working at the intersection of business, technology, and product. My happy place solving problems that touch all three, surrounded by a great collaborative team, creating passionate and happy customers.
My career started on a trading floor at Macquarie Bank, then I walked away to become a professional snowboarder for a decade. That led to 11 years building Australia's #1 surf and snow platforms at Coastalwatch, then building and selling 3Crowns Technologies through government contracts and an acquisition by Spectur. Most recently at Vygo, I led an AI-first product transformation from zero capability.
Every chapter taught me something different. I believe technology should help people be their best, running seamlessly in the background. My favourite part of this work is helping people achieve their goals.
I'm always looking to effectively create maximum positive impact, whether that's a startup on a sharp trajectory or a large organisation where I can positively impact products that reach large audiences. Outside of work, you'll find me surfing, snowboarding, hiking, and exploring the outdoors with my family.
Experience
2024 — DEC 2025
Leading AI-first product transformation for an Aussie edtech startup in the enterprise space. Rapid prototyping, evals, monitoring, and delivering real customer value through AI, not hype.
2018 — 2024
Built the machine-vision software business through government contracts, led ISO 27001 certification through crisis, managed M&A integration post-acquisition by Spectur. P&L ownership across the full business.
2009 — 2019
11 years building Australia's #1 surf and #1 snow platforms. Delivered #1 app in category, 80% subscriber retention, new programmatic video revenue. Established major partnerships (Foxsports, Surfstitch, Surfline), exited through acquistions.
1998 — 2008
10 years travelling the world as a professional athlete. Built brand partnerships (Rip Curl, Oakley, K2), co-founded Australia's #1 snowboard magazine, chaired Snowboard Australia, founded international snowboard camps. Exited through acquisition of the company.
1993 — 1997
Macquarie Bank's youngest prop trader at the time. Ran the SPI Options book (~$20M cap). Foundation in quantitative analysis, risk management, and high-pressure decision-making.
Qualifications
Product Faculty
Product Faculty
Maven
Google x Kaggle