Meet Fiona Li, Our Director Of Product

By Wristcheck

1 Mar 2024

5 min read

Inspired by big ideas and meticulous about the tiniest of details, our Director of Product, Fiona, has made it her mission to build products that change life for the better

Her drive to learn and innovate has taken her all over the world - whether that's in Nepal to bring education to under-resourced communities, in Singapore building Skyscanner, in Rwanda bringing investors and funding to energy startups, or right here at home in Hong Kong building a tech-driven horological universe. Throughout all these experiences, the string that ties it together is a sincere desire to leave something better than how she found it.

Now at the helm of our Product team, Fiona applies her knack for solving difficult problems to the world of watches, taking common struggles of any horological aficionado and conceptualizing technical solutions that make buying, selling, and learning about watches safer and more accessible than ever.

In her off time, you'll find her poring over personal development books or planning her next adventure in some far-flung corner of the world.

When you first started your career, Product Management was still a fairly new field. How did you come across this area within tech, and can you comment on the growth you've experienced since then?

My career path has been an absolute whirlwind, to be honest. My background is in chemical engineering, so my first real job was actually as a business consultant to energy companies in implementing smart meters. This led to me taking on more consulting roles for banking and FMCG clients, specifically in digital transformation — which is where I made my first foray into tech!

At the time, everyone was moving into tech, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon and moved to Singapore for a job at Skyscanner. I took on a variety of roles there, going from agile coach to data scientist to growth hacker to finally landing as a product owner, managing a squad called Innovation & Emerging Techniques. Not long after, however, due to some personal reasons I left my position at Skyscanner to come back to Hong Kong and support my family business.

A chemical engineer by qualification, Fiona has had a dynamic career path, working as a tech consultant for companies across the globe and also as an entrepreneur

It was during this time that I really got my hands dirty as a product manager. I started my own company, and developed an IOT (Internet of Things, consisting of both hardware and software development) product from 0 to 1. From initially project managing an outsourced China team, to hiring my own in-house UX/UI designer and engineers, I acquired hands-on experiences as a product manager while working as CEO.

It was at this point that I realized all of the experiences in my past culminated to this very role - as a PM you need to possess business analysis skills, data analysis skills, a growth mindset, know how to work in both waterfall and agile projects and with both designers and engineers, among many other things.

After leaving my family business, I worked as a PM on a few freelance projects with both startups and corporates before landing a full-time job at Prenetics, where I helped build both the digital (web and app) and physical (healthcare tool kit) products.

And now my road has led me to becoming Wristcheck's Director of Product!

You've played an instrumental role in creating all of our tech products, from our marketplace Wristcheck.com, to our proprietary Wristcheck price index. What can we expect to see in Wristcheck's near future?

Where do I begin? There's so much going on behind the scenes, but just off the top of my head, I'd advise everyone to get excited about the Wristcheck app we're launching this year. This is going to be the one-stop shop platform where users can buy and consign watches, and manage their own watch portfolio.

We're trying to integrate the marketplace fully into everyone's personal watch portfolio by providing an accurate estimate of market price for each and every watch on the market while taking into consideration the watch's condition. That means, users are able to follow watches that they want to buy and get alerts when it's the "right" time to buy, or create their virtual collection of watches they own, and sell them when they want to and when the price is right (powered by our Wristcheck Index!). On top of all that, we're also building a new business at Wristcheck where users can easily list their watch on our platform for sale!

You're known within the office as an avid traveler. Which of the trips you've taken has impacted you the most?

There's no way I can name just one, so I hope you'll indulge me in naming three!

I used to be a board member of an iNGO called Building Education, where I organized a volunteering trip to bring a few people to Pokhara in Nepal each year. The initial purpose of this month-long trip was to find more donors amongst the local community for the education center we supported. As we were connecting with local leaders, however, we were presented with the opportunity to organize a women's empowerment conference for the mothers of the children we supported. In this conference, we taught women how to use the business model canvas, how to start a business, and financial literacy among other things. We also got connected with a local government official who showed up at the conference and gave a motivational speech. We even got in touch with local PR and had the whole conference covered in the local news! (Professional achievements aside, I also spent a week in the mountains, stayed with a Guru, meditated at 6am every morning, and learnt Reiki. 10/10 would go again.)

As a a board member of an iNGO called Building Education, Fiona organized a women's empowerment conference to support children's education in Pokhara, Nepal

Another trip that stuck with me was Iran - I tagged along with my parents and went to Tehran on a business trip in 2016. One of the most striking things about Tehran was that nothing was familiar; I didn't see any of the international brands like McDonalds or Coca-Cola that were ubiquitous to life in so many other places. All I had there was some non-alcoholic "beer". The food was amazing, and I spent a few days alone walking around markets and palaces; I even hired a driver to go north of Tehran to trek across some rolling hills. It was great to be in a place that was so different from anywhere else I had been.

The final trip that I can think of was a two-week trip in Rwanda and Uganda. I was part of a group of volunteer consultants assigned to work with local African startups, helping them pitch to investors and acquire funding. I loved my project because I got to work with a solar power startup initiative to design an education programme and create toolkits for kids in school to build their own solar power lamps. I felt that I was truly doing something impactful for the community there because we were trying to improve the electrification rate in Eastern African countries. This was also my first time in an African country, and I experienced a lot of firsts there - my first time seeing gorillas in the national park in Uganda (we crossed the border overnight which was super sketchy), attending the opening ceremony of Rwanda's first cricket stadium, and eating authentic African food.