Product Advisory Service

Helping Founders and Heads of Product scale their amazing companies, products, and organizations through periods of high growth.

Engagement Purpose

The purpose of the advisory engagement is to serve as a coach, thought partner, and sounding board to help the Founder/Head of Product learn best practice and develop their craft, find and mature product market fit, navigate the dynamic challenges of scaling product organizations, and avoid catastrophic mistakes better than they otherwise could without an advisory partner.

Engagement Structure

Advisory engagements involve focused 1-hour discussions with the Founder/Head of Product to answer questions, provide feedback on in-progress work products, and offer targeted guidance. Rather than step in and do the work directly, the goal is to help them do the best job possible to help drive a strong outcome for the company, customers, and team members.

Engagement Terms

Advisory terms are flexible and low risk. Engagement subscriptions are month-to-month and can be cancelled at any time. Meeting cadence is weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, and the cadence can be adjusted at any time.

Hot Topics

Topics may vary depending on the company’s stage and the priorities / challenges of the Head of Product. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of typically hot topics that could be addressed:

person in black long sleeve shirt holding persons hand
person in black long sleeve shirt holding persons hand
People
  • Identify the right profile for the Head of Product (first PM, first Director, first VP, first CPO)

  • Define a first class PM hiring process

  • Establish a PM career development / performance management framework

  • Establish clear organizational structure, including:

    • Charters per team

    • Target ratios between engineering, product, and design

    • Goal setting (KPI’s) per team

    • Establish platform / shared service engineering teams with clear ownership

people riding boat on body of water
people riding boat on body of water
Process
  • Clarify the division of responsibility between CEO / Founders and Head of Product

  • Establish an effective product development process with engineering

  • Implement a customer first problem and solution validation process

  • Establish a prioritization framework

  • Leverage OKR’s to communicate executive priorities to team

  • Async/remote work best practices

  • Internal and external communication strategy and artifacts

white arrow on bricked pavement
white arrow on bricked pavement
black smartphone near person
black smartphone near person
Product
  • Define a clear product strategy that maps to company/GTM strategy

  • Identify and effectively target an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

  • Pricing & packaging strategy, tactics, and optimization

  • Product led growth strategy, tactics, and optimization

  • Leverage product themes to communicate direction

  • Mitigate problems of technical scale such as performance and security

  • Portfolio/investment management framework

  • Open source strategy

Leadership & Communications
  • Help the Head of Product work effectively with the CEO & exec team

  • Big stage presentations & executive presence

  • Guidance helping negotiate priorities and direction with stakeholders, especially GTM

  • Help the Head of Product navigate board dynamics

  • IPO readiness