You are filling a seat that decides what a company builds for the next five years. Here are the questions I am usually asked, and the record behind each answer.
Chief Product Officer four times · product, design and engineering as one organization
Swipe sideways to see the whole drawing.
The questions search firms and boards ask me most. My answer is in the margin. Open any line for the record.
The brief · executive product role
Chief Product Officer four times, three of them full time, in companies from a few people to about 85 in my organization at the largest, with a $10M P&L at Unbounce. Startups and founder-led scale-ups. Before that, a game studio that Microsoft acquired, where I moved into incubating new IP.
Smart Traffic shipped at Unbounce in 2019: a model that routes each visitor to the variant most likely to convert, now covered by two patents. At Ubersuggest, generative features were in build in January 2022, ten months before ChatGPT.
That is how I have run it every time. Design embedded in the squads, engineering and product planning against the same capabilities, one roadmap.
Most of my roles have been in founder-led companies. The founder's instinct is usually the company's best asset. The job is to give it a system, not to replace it.
I hire for the next stage, not the current one, and I develop people into roles they did not know they could hold. One of them later hired me.
At Unbounce we took revenue from $20.5M to $24.4M USD, and net profit rose 251%. The work started by turning churn from a support number into the ceiling on the company.
I have presented product strategy to boards and investors, including through a financing. The documents themselves stay under NDA.
Both, in sequence. When a company is in trouble I make decisions and set routines; once it is steady I run the operation; when there is room I coach. The order depends on the state of the company, not on my preference.
Three of my four Chief Product Officer roles were full time, and for a company and a product I would choose, I join full time; I was at Unbounce for five years. Otherwise I work fractionally, and in most cases that is enough to solve the problem. When a read shows the work needs someone in the seat full time, I take it, interim or permanent. I decide it the way I decide everything else: on the evidence, not on the excitement of the first month.
Public LinkedIn recommendations, so you can check them.
Miles is ideally suited for high-growth environments where innovation, customer-centricity, talent management and organizational scalability are all equally critical to success. He is the glue that helps connect organizational silos.Michelle Mercier · Vice President of Marketing, Unbounce · 2018
Miles has a distinct capability of dissecting complexity to bring forward the pieces that matter. He is a systems thinker, but his systems don't rely on process, they rely on people.Chandra Tumu · Director of Product, ATB Ventures · 2021
I wholeheartedly recommend him to any organization seeking an executive who understands how to effectively balance business requirements with a stellar user experience.Amber Bezahler · COO and Chief Marketing Officer, Vancouver Film School · 2013
What does your client think the role is?
Send me the brief. I will tell you what I read in it: the company, the seat, and what the role has to change.