About Leonardo Rocco

Leo is a global product development expert and pioneer in mobile payments. He’s been hands-on from designing, to writing code, to setting up and leading global teams from 2 people to thousands of people. At Kettering University in Michigan, he created a learning system for mechanical engineers that cut down the time to learn computer aided design (CAD) software by more than 50%. In Huntsville, Alabama at Marshall Space Flight Center, he helped NASA engineers design and prototype next generation space orbitals. In Silicon Valley at IBM’s Global Technology Center, he was responsible for helping Intel, HP, Cisco, and Apple, optimize software development, through establishing rigor in the management of source code and defect reduction through test automation. As an entrepreneur, in San Francisco, he was leading the digital transformation in payments and digital commerce through GoPago, a company funded by JP Morgan, where he and his team were the first to create the ability to order and pay on the smartphone and skip the line at businesses like Starbucks. He advised and enabled some of the most admired companies, such as Google, Amazon, MLB, NBA, and the NFL on best practices in local commerce and mobile payments, subsequently, selling the company to Amazon. Currently, he leads product development and digital transformation at one of the biggest companies you’ve likely never heard of called Fiserv; a 50k person, $100B financial technology company that creates software that powers governments, such as the United States of America, banks, such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, enterprises such as, Microsoft, Walmart and Target and main street businesses across America such as, my local hotspot, Balboa Cafe on Fillmore St. in San Francisco. He is primarily focusing on the end-to-end customer experience and the api-ification of platforms. Leo is an active angel investor and a venture advisor at Stanford’s Venture Studio program at Stanford University, where he mentors students on all phases from starting, growing and selling a company. In addition, he is the creator of the R5 Method (https://r5method.org), an open source methodology for better product development.