Define success before you build. Before a single line of code is written, know what “working” looks like. Set your metrics, set your thresholds, and commit to them. Vanity metrics will mislead you. The discipline of defining success upfront forces alignment across the team and keeps execution honest.

Currently, only about 1 in 4 employees in the tech industry is a woman. So what does it take to create a successful career as a woman in Tech? In this interview series called Lessons From Inspirational Women Leaders in Tech, we are talking to successful women leaders in the tech industry to share stories and insights about what they did to lead successful careers. We also discuss the steps needed to create a great tech product. As part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Alexandra Ryabova.

Alexandra Ryabova joined Wizz in January 2024. She ensures Wizz remains a safe, compliant, and trusted platform. She defines and leads the company’s Trust & Safety strategy, partnering with best-in-class providers to manage risk at scale. Alexandra also oversees PR initiatives that strengthen brand credibility, support Wizz’s public positioning, and drive regulatory compliance in close collaboration with authorities and internal teams.

Prior to her role at Wizz, Alexandra had experience in strategic operations, automation, and data analysis across tech and finance, which strengthened her cross-functional and analytical expertise. Alexandra holds degrees from Sciences Po and ESSEC Business School.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before diving in, our readers would love to learn more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Thank you, it’s been quite a journey. I am currently heading operations at Wizz App, a social discovery app without vanity metrics. I’ve always been curious about what makes companies truly work or fail, and how strategy translates into execution, especially during periods of rapid growth and high pressure. That naturally pointed me toward operations. It’s interesting to me to organize complexity, develop efficient procedures, and establish connections between various aspects of a business. Tech wasn’t necessarily the plan. But the best career moves are rarely obvious. What drew me to the Wizz was the scale of impact you can have in a small team. We’re twenty people building a product that reaches millions of users. Every decision matters, and the pace is dynamic.

The product itself also resonated with me personally. I grew up as a digital native. I understand how important online communities are for self-expression and a sense of belonging. But I also see the gap that still exists, the loneliness that persists even among the most “connected” people online. Wizz tackles that directly: no follower counts, no performance metrics, just genuine new connections. When I saw that, I wanted to be part of building it.

It has been said that our mistakes can sometimes be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Early in my career, I started working in France, which meant navigating a professional culture that was new to me. As anyone adapting to a different culture knows, small mistakes are part of the learning process. But what those moments really teach you is adaptability. That mindset has stayed with me, and it’s especially relevant when building for a Gen Z audience. Our users are incredibly global and culturally diverse, so staying flexible and open to different perspectives is essential.

What do you feel has been your ‘career-defining’ moment? We’d love to hear the lead-up, what happened, and the impact it had on your life.

Without question, it was leading the launch of Wizz App in Japan. It started analytically: estimating revenue potential, marketing investment, and the critical user mass needed for the product to work. Japan looked strong on paper, but in practice, it challenged every assumption we had.

We realized the app wasn’t adapted at all. Japanese users behaved differently from our US audience. Many were reluctant to upload a real photo during verification before they’d even seen the app experience. Localization went far beyond translation, and we needed authentic Gen Z language, which required genuine local input. Even the product structure had to change: Japanese text takes up more space, which meant redesigning most screens.

Our marketing messaging failed to land. We had to find a local agency that truly understood Japanese Gen Z culture and rebuild our positioning from scratch. What made it career-defining wasn’t that it went smoothly — it didn’t. It was what it demanded of me as a problem-solver. You can prepare, but you can’t fully anticipate a new market. What matters is how fast you adjust, how clearly you communicate under pressure, and whether you keep pushing forward despite the uncertainty.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

My studies gave me strong analytical foundations, but they didn’t provide a direct path into a startup operations role, where your value is measured by results. Learning to operate in a tech environment was like learning a new language, and I don’t mean that figuratively. In the same week, I’d be in meetings with engineers and then with growth and marketing teams, each speaking entirely different professional vocabularies. I had to become fluent across all of them quickly.

Working in a flat, 20-person team without the structure of a large corporation was also an adjustment. There’s no red tape, which sounds freeing, and it is, but it also means full ownership, faster decisions, and fewer safety nets. You’re accountable immediately and completely. What kept me going was simple: the work was meaningful, and the growth was real. When you can see direct impact from your decisions and feel your capabilities sharpen month over month, that momentum carries you through the hard stretches.

Ok, super. Thank you for all that. Let’s shift to the main focus of our interview. We’d love to learn a bit about your company. What is the pain point that your company is helping to address? How does your company help people?

Gen Z is statistically the loneliest generation, despite being the most digitally connected in history. That paradox is the problem Wizz is built to solve. Most social platforms have optimized for engagement metrics: likes, follower counts, and viral content. But those mechanics reward performance, make people scroll endlessly, and still leave them feeling disconnected. Wizz App creates space for something different. No follower metrics, no social capital to accumulate. The experience is built around genuine first impressions and real conversations with people outside your existing circle. It fills the gap between passive scrolling and actual relationship-building, and for a generation that needs that more than any other, it matters.

If someone wants to lead a great company and create great products, what is the most important quality (for example, “determination” or “eye for detail”) that person should have, and what habits or behaviors would you suggest for honing that particular quality?

Clarity of judgment under uncertainty. In fast-moving environments, the ability to make a sound decision with incomplete information, and owning it — becomes everything. The habit I’d suggest: make the decision, analyze the learnings, test, and be data-centric. Not to second-guess yourself, but to learn. Over time, that practice sharpens your instincts and helps you identify where your blind spots are.

Beyond judgment, the qualities I’ve found most valuable in practice are perseverance, composure under pressure, and the ability to communicate with precision. Know your audience, give context, and be concise, but be ready to explain further if needed. And trust others within their areas of expertise. Strong leaders know when to step forward and when to step back so others can do their best work.

Next, let’s talk about teams. What’s a team management strategy or framework that you’ve found to be exceptionally useful for the product development process?

One framework I’ve found exceptionally effective is combining a flat hierarchy with a strong feedback culture. We run weekly team meetings where anyone can challenge ideas, regardless of role or seniority. The goal is to pressure-test thinking early and often. Before pitching a new project, every proposal must clearly answer four questions with supporting data: Why is this change necessary? Why now? Why this solution? Why is it better than the alternatives? This forces clarity and prevents opinion-driven decisions.

We also have a strict rule: before presenting anything in the weekly meeting, you must pre-align with the team. Everyone should already know what you’re about to pitch and have had the chance to give feedback. As a result, meetings stay short, discussions are sharper, and ideas arrive already refined. This creates real ownership, speeds up decision-making, and ensures that by the time something is presented formally, it’s already been stress-tested from multiple angles.

When you think of the strongest team you’ve ever worked with, why do you think the team worked so well together, and can you recall an anecdote that illustrates the dynamic?

The Wizz safety team stands out. What made it exceptional was a shared sense of mission and genuine collective ownership: high trust, low ego. A clear example was during the launch of the Tech Coalition’s Pathways program. We had to implement an entirely new safety infrastructure on top of existing systems, under tight timelines and high standards. That required deep coordination across external moderation partners, engineers, product, customer support, and manual moderation agents simultaneously. It could have easily become fragmented. Instead, the team operated with full alignment. When challenges came up, and there were many, people stepped in to support each other rather than protect their own scope. That shared accountability made complex cross-functional execution possible. The result: Wizz App joining the Tech Coalition as a full member speaks for itself.

If you had only one software tool in your arsenal, what would it be, why, and what other tools (software or tangible items) do you consider to be mission-critical?

Claude. I use it across most of my work: drafting, synthesizing information, working through complex problems quickly. It removes friction from tasks that used to take hours. Beyond that, Notion is essential for product management and internal documentation. And our internal analytics tool is mission-critical. We’re a deeply data-driven team, and having real-time visibility into what’s happening in the product isn’t optional. It’s how we make decisions.

Let’s talk about downtime. What’s your go-to practice or ritual for preventing burnout?

Physical movement is a consistent reset, whether that’s a workout or just getting outside. Seeing friends and family. Picking up new interests that have no connection to my professional life. Within the workday itself, our team lunches are genuinely valuable. Stepping away from screens and just being with the people you work with, without an agenda, is its own kind of recharge.

Thank you for all of that. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience, what are your “5 Steps Needed to Create Great Tech Products”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

1. Start with a sharp, data-backed problem.

Not a feature gap, but a problem validated by evidence. At Wizz App, everything traces back to a clearly identified problem: Gen Z is the loneliest generation despite being the most online. That’s not intuition. That’s research, user behavior data, and cultural signals pointing in the same direction. Without that foundation, you’re building on assumptions.

2. Define success before you build.

Before a single line of code is written, know what “working” looks like. Set your metrics, set your thresholds, and commit to them. Vanity metrics will mislead you. The discipline of defining success upfront forces alignment across the team and keeps execution honest.

3. Break big problems into testable steps.

No product launch should be a single bet. The Japan launch taught me this directly. We had a thesis, and then reality tested it in ways we hadn’t anticipated. The teams that survive are the ones who’ve broken their assumptions into discrete, testable hypotheses and built feedback loops to learn fast. Small iterations compound into major product improvements.

4. Test relentlessly — and detach your ego.

The behaviour of your users is your source of truth. Invite feedback that is honest, and be willing to act on what you find, even when the data contradicts your original vision. The best product decisions I’ve seen came from teams that were genuinely curious rather than attached to being right.

5. Build safety and trust in by design.

In social products, real connection begins with users feeling safe. Safety infrastructure cannot be retrofitted. It has to be structural from day one. At Wizz, this is foundational to everything. Our membership in the Tech Coalition reflects that commitment. Trust is not a feature you add later, it should be woven into how the product is.

Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in Tech? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

No. Representation at the leadership level remains far behind where it should be. The change I’d push for most is sponsorship over mentorship. Mentorship is valuable, but it doesn’t open doors. Sponsorship is when senior leaders actively advocate for women when rooms are filled without them, and, if able, get them a seat at the table. Real progress requires moving beyond metrics and into culture. At Wizz App, structural equality is embedded in our open feedback culture and flat hierarchy. In our team meetings, every voice carries genuine weight. When heterogeneous perspectives are built directly into how decisions are made, the product — and the organization — are stronger. That’s what meaningful inclusion looks like.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

Whitney Wolfe Herd. She built a consumer social product with safety and trust at its center and navigated the cultural, legal, and reputational scrutiny that comes with operating at that scale in that space. The resilience that requires, and the clarity of vision she maintained through it, is something I find genuinely instructive. I’d want to understand how she held the line on what the product stood for when the external pressure to compromise was enormous.

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!