Work
Four ways to work together.
Each of these stands on its own. All of them start from the same question: has anyone actually decided what this product is for?
Positioning
Positioning & Proposition
2–4 weeks · fixed scope
Most teams believe this is settled long before it is. The product does something demonstrable, a few customers are enthusiastic, and the roadmap is full — but if you ask five people in the company who the buyer is, you get five answers, and the marketing has to stay vague because nobody can close the gap.
Call me when you are pre-raise or pre-launch, you want an idea validated before you spend on design and build, sales is not landing, or engineering is building things nobody asked for.
What it covers
- What the product actually does, stated plainly enough to be argued with
- The problem it solves, and for whom that problem is expensive
- User versus buyer — who gets value, and who signs
- Where it fits in a real workflow, and what it displaces to get there
- The competitive picture, including the incumbent that is a spreadsheet
- A feasibility verdict, including when the answer is no
Engagement shape
Fixed scope and fixed duration. Interviews with your team and a sample of customers and lost prospects, then a written position your executives can act on and your product team can build against.
Sprints
Discovery & Strategy Sprints
4–8 weeks
For a specific decision that has stalled — usually because it needs evidence nobody has had time to gather, or because it cuts across product, sales and engineering and has no natural owner.
Call me when there is a big decision in front of you and you lack the internal bandwidth — or the objectivity — to make it well.
Typical subjects
- Market entry — a new segment, a new geography, a new buyer
- Customer discovery, run properly rather than as a round of friendly calls
- Roadmap reset, where the backlog has become a record of who asked loudest
- Partner and channel strategy
- Pricing and packaging architecture, including the move to subscription
Engagement shape
Scoped to the decision rather than to a number of days. Ends with a recommendation and the evidence behind it, not a deck of options for someone else to choose between.
Leadership
Fractional & Interim Product Leadership
1–3 days per week · ongoing
A company often needs senior product judgement well before it can justify the headcount, and a departing product leader leaves a gap an internal promotion cannot always cover straight away. Both are solvable without a permanent hire.
Call me when the founder is still doing product and it is breaking, the first product hire is not working, you have raised and the function needs to exist, or you have a gap between product leaders.
What it covers
- Head of Product, part-time or interim, on a defined weekly commitment
- Establishing discovery, prioritisation and release rhythm that survives handover
- Coaching product managers who have come up through technical or domain roles
- Running the search and onboarding for the permanent hire
Engagement shape
Ongoing, with an explicit plan for making the role redundant. If I am still needed in two years, something has gone wrong.
Diligence
Product & Technical Due Diligence
Days to weeks
Software assets are easy to misread from a data room. Revenue quality, product defensibility and integration cost all turn on things the financials do not show — how much of the product is configuration rather than code, whether the customer relationships belong to the software or to three long-serving staff, and how much of the technical debt is load-bearing.
Call me when you are evaluating a target, preparing for sale, or about to make a senior product hire you cannot afford to get wrong.
What it covers
- Product and architecture assessment in commercial terms, not only technical ones
- Roadmap credibility — what has been promised to customers versus what is deliverable
- Customer concentration, and the people-versus-product dependency question
- Realistic integration cost and timeline, from having lived through it twice
- Sell-side preparation: making the product story legible to a strategic buyer
- Board advisory, and assessment of product leadership candidates
Engagement shape
Fitted to your transaction timetable. Written findings, plus availability for the sessions where they get argued about.
Not sure which of these it is?
That is normal, and a first conversation is the cheapest way to find out. Describe the situation and I will tell you whether I am the right person for it.