Fractional & interim Chief Product Officer
The complaint is never the constraint.
Growth stalls for structural reasons, and the fix crosses strategy, design and money in a single move. Most advisors own one of those and hand off at the seam. I hold all three and take the seat. Founder-led SaaS between $10M and $50M ARR.
- Best fit
- Stalled growth, fragmented portfolios, product friction, and the AI transition
- Engagement model
- Six-week diagnostic, focused advisory, fractional and interim CPO
- Based
- Vancouver & Salt Spring Island, BC — engagements run remote-first
01 — How I work
Three capabilities. One line. No handoff.
Most advisors own one link. Strategists hand off to designers, designers hand off to operators, operators hand off to finance, and value leaks at every seam. Holding all three is the reason a diagnosis in week two survives contact with the roadmap in month three.
Read where a market, a technology, and a customer are going before the data confirms it. Then choose the bet, and say plainly what you are giving up to make it.
Understand how humans and systems actually behave, then design the product, the organization, and the operating model so the bet is executable by real people.
Price it, package it, staff it, and tie it to a number a leadership team will defend in front of a board.
02 — The alternatives
What else you could do, and what it costs you.
You are choosing between six things whether or not anybody says so out loud. Here they are, and here is what each one takes from you.
| The alternative | What it actually is | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Do nothing | The founder keeps holding product in their head for another year. | The ceiling stays. The surface area grows. |
| Hire a full-time CPO | A six to nine month search, a package north of $300K, and equity. | Slow, and a wrong hire at this stage costs eighteen months. |
| A product advisory firm | Coaching, workshops and a framework for the team you already have. | The advice lands. Nobody owns the outcome. |
| A fractional executive firm | Matched to a bench executive, usually go-to-market led. | There is rarely a product officer on the bench. |
| Your sponsor’s operating partner | A portfolio-wide playbook applied part-time across eight companies. | Generic, and they report to the sponsor, not to you. |
| An independent from a marketplace | A cheaper day rate and one discipline, deep. | Owns one link. Hands off at the seam. |
One claim does not beat all six. Against doing nothing the argument is the cost of another year. Against a full-time hire it is speed and reversibility. Against an advisory firm it is that I take the seat. Against an independent it is that I hold all three.
03 — Selected work
What it looks like when it works.
Betting the platform on AI three years early
A landing-page tool repositioned from A/B testing to machine-learning conversion optimization, while improving profitability under an acquisition clock.
Read the case study →Resetting a six-acquisition portfolio while raising
A multi-product SaaS business had integrated its acquisitions commercially but never technically. Simplifying the portfolio and rebuilding the operating model made the growth story investable again.
Read the case study →Turning PLG churn into customer lifetime value
Customers were not leaving because the product lacked features. They were leaving because it never guided them to a win. Rebuilding onboarding around guided value more than halved voluntary churn.
Read the case study →04 — Insights
What I am thinking about now.
The product is not the features
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