Sophian Bensaou

I had the pleasure of working with Sophian at OpenTable for three years—first as his hiring manager and direct supervisor in our Analytics organization, and later as a peer in our Product Management organization.

As the first hire in our Analytics team, Sophian helped build the foundation for what became an industry-leading analytics function. He introduced advanced causal inference methods (CausalImpact in R and Python, quasi-experiments, and various A/B testing techniques) that enabled our Product and Development teams to ship more impactful work and our Marketing team to significantly improve campaign effectiveness. He was also instrumental in building our experimentation platform from scratch, allowing us to move off costly third-party tools. When we expanded from client-side to server-side testing, the range and quality of our experiments improved dramatically.

Because our analytics team was small at the time, Sophian worked closely with every department—marketing, product, finance, sales, and executive leadership—developing strong cross-functional relationships. He dedicated himself to helping colleagues understand his analytical methods and build trust. Whether assisting a teammate with a routine analysis or presenting recommendations to executives, he approached every task with rigor, objectivity, and enthusiasm. He quickly became a trusted partner across the organization.

Over time, Sophian developed a deep understanding of the business and our customers. His analyses often inspired new product ideas that drove innovation and growth. Naturally, he transitioned from Analyst to Product Manager, continuing to leverage customer, behavioral, and experimental data to identify pain points, feature gaps, and performance opportunities. He took ownership of OpenTable's mobile website, which under his leadership grew from a small portion of our business to our largest source of new customer growth. His team became a model for how PMs, Designers, and Engineers could collaborate in a truly data-driven, experimental way.

I feel very fortunate to have hired and worked with Sophian. I'd hire him again in a heartbeat. Any company will be stronger with him on board; he's exceptionally smart, collaborative, and a genuine driver of positive culture.

Sophian has been instrumental in driving systematic revenue growth for our educational e-commerce platforms. His High Velocity Wins The Game approach to launching many small AB tests, all while planning for more complex experiments, delivered $8.8M in measurable revenue impact through 387 successfully launched AB tests, achieving a 20.7% win rate that significantly exceeded industry benchmarks.

What sets Sophian apart is his rare blend of strategic thinking and results-driven execution: he doesn't just analyze, he delivers. He developed a comprehensive testing roadmap while maintaining consistent monthly test launches, including breakthrough seasonal optimizations during our critical Back to School period, generating $3.1M incremental revenue in 2024.

I also like how he would nudge me and my colleagues to do more testing for success; that means he acted like a partner and not a vendor! Sophian's systematic approach to experimentation and his ability to translate testing results into clear business impact made him an invaluable partner in our optimization efforts.