When Stephanie Kazalac joined Airalo, eSIMs were still unfamiliar to many travelers, and the company was largely unknown outside early adopters. The technology was new, the market was young, and while B2C traction was building, the B2B eSIM space was already gaining attention, with several players moving quickly to establish their position.
With Airalo's consumer app gaining momentum as global travel resumed post-pandemic, it became clear that the next step was to unlock opportunities in the B2B space.
Kazalac's objective was clear: build the product foundation from the ground up and position Airalo to compete and lead in both the B2B and B2B2C connectivity landscapes. Achieving that required more than launching new features — it demanded strategic clarity and a deep understanding of partners' needs across the travel, fintech, telecom, and retail industries.
In under two years, what began as a 30-minute conversation with co-founder Bahadir Ozdemir became Airalo Partners, a global ecosystem now powering more than 5,000 partners across industries. Kazalac's work transformed Airalo from a consumer-only app into a fast-scaling B2B connectivity player, helping to shape how businesses around the world adopt and distribute eSIM technology.
Building a Category from Scratch
With no established playbook for how eSIM adoption should unfold in the B2B space, Stephanie Kazalac and her early team made one decisive choice: start with a clear vision and improve velocity continuously along the way. From the outset, their guiding product principle was simplicity: build solutions that remove complexity for partners, deliver a seamless connectivity experience for their customers, and move quickly enough to stay ahead of a market evolving in real time.
That clarity became the filter for every early decision. When the initiative began, the entire team consisted of just three people: a Product Director, a Director of Engineering, and a backend engineer. The mandate was ambitious: move fast while building both a team and a product suite that could define a new category.
From day one, speed wasn't the goal; precision was. Instead of racing to ship a minimum viable product, the philosophy centered on building lovable products that partners could operate at scale immediately. That meant resisting the temptation to launch early for the sake of launching. Kazalac's team chose patience over pressure, gathering adoption signals from early partners, validating the product experience, and ensuring the foundations were strong enough before making any public announcements.
The uncertainty wasn't just internal. The industry itself was still in its beginnings. Few companies had experimented with eSIMs, and even fewer had a clear strategy for integrating them. As the team built, they learned about partner needs, operational models, and the role connectivity could play in broader ecosystems. Fast forward to today, and the landscape looks entirely different. eSIM awareness has surged. Companies across industries are prioritizing eSIM integration either to resell as part of their offering or to deploy internally as a cost-efficient alternative to roaming. What began as a category with no blueprint has become a strategic frontier for businesses worldwide.
Leading with KPI Discipline
From the beginning, Kazalac placed a strong emphasis on defining clear product success metrics. She and her team spent significant time aligning on which KPIs truly mattered, how the success of each product would be measured, and how performance would be monitored and reported. Every initiative on the product roadmap is tied to a specific KPI, and each new feature is evaluated to determine whether it meaningfully moves the needle. Adoption is measured for every single feature, ensuring the team understands not just what they built, but how it's being used, and how it contributes to overall impact.
This discipline became a core part of the team's operating model: measuring success from awareness through retention and ensuring that every product decision supported the KPIs that defined the health and growth of the business line. While these metrics informed revenue goals, they are equally designed to confirm that the team is building the right products, with the right features, for the right partners.
Making Product a Sales Accelerator
In most organizations, sales and product run in parallel. At Airalo, the product was designed to amplify go-to-market from the very beginning.
Today, a 30+ person commercial team uses the Airalo Partners suite to drive deals, integrations, and long-term partner growth. With the Airalo Partner Platform, Airalo Partner API, Airalo co-branded and white-label solutions, the product serves as the toolkit that enables scale.
"The product wasn't just built to serve sales, it was sales," says Kazalac. "That's what makes the relationship work."
By building trust through usability rather than pitch decks, the product function accelerated deals and reduced onboarding friction. Partners didn't need persuasion; they needed products that simply worked and could be integrated into their ecosystems immediately.
Kazalac also leaned into product-led acquisition for SMBs, where self-service and speed matter most. The product suite was intentionally built so small and medium-sized partners could discover, onboard, and begin operating with little to no involvement from a sales representative. Through Airalo's owned channels, SMBs can adopt the solution independently, while the partnerships team focuses on more complex enterprise deals.
This dual growth strategy created a strong growth flywheel. Product became the link between sales, adoption, and expansion, letting Airalo Partners grow across diverse partner segments.
What Founders and Product Leaders Can Learn
There's no perfect roadmap for building a new vertical, but there are repeatable principles. Here's what Airalo's journey reveals:
- Start with a clear vision. Don't wait for the perfect backlog to explain where you're headed.
- Design for simplicity. Easy-to-understand wins over feature-dense every time.
- Invest in the process before you "need" it. Alignment is your operating system.
- Treat friction like feedback. Every support ticket is a strategic input.
- Make the product your commercial asset. It should earn trust before a salesperson speaks.
"Startups are born in ambiguity," Kazalac notes. "But the right product habits build certainty where it matters most."
Leading Through Uncertainty
Building Airalo Partners wasn't simply about building products; it was an effort to define a category still taking shape. The eSIM space was evolving rapidly, yet B2B adoption demanded far more education than expected. Beyond explaining how an eSIM works, the challenge was helping businesses understand how to operate an eSIM business, communicate its value to their customers, and reassess which segments represented the strongest opportunities. That meant balancing fast-adopting partners who brought immediate traction with high-value partners who required deeper support and more tailored features, yet moved at a slower pace.
The team found itself recalibrating constantly: reassessing priorities, identifying the highest-value adopters, and weighing quick wins against the realities of a maturing market. We committed to greater transparency, tightened feedback loops, and strengthened alignment, recognizing that long-term velocity comes not from speed alone but from an organization moving decisively in the same direction.
Interested in Scaling a B2B Product or Category?
Whether launching a new product line or scaling from Series A to C, investing in product leadership can accelerate growth.
Stephanie Kazalac partners with founders and executive teams to define product vision, establish resilient operating models, and develop go-to-market strategies designed for emerging or rapidly shifting industries. Her advisory work focuses on helping companies navigate ambiguity, accelerate execution, and create products that scale.
Connect on LinkedIn to explore strategic advisory or product consulting support.
About the Author
Mara Linford is a writer and strategist focused on product innovation, emerging tech ecosystems, and the people behind category-defining ideas. With a background in B2B SaaS and early-stage ventures, she tells grounded, insight-driven stories that connect strategy with human experience. Her work has been featured in founder briefings, product journals, and growth-focused publications across the tech landscape.
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