For Startups

Fractional Head of Product / CPO

A senior product leader, for a fraction of a full-time hire.

I embed part-time - typically 10 to 20 hours a week - as your company's actual Head of Product or CPO. I own the roadmap, run discovery, and make the calls a full-time hire would make. Not an advisor reviewing your work from the outside - a product leader doing the work, inside your team.

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For founders with real users and revenue, but no one who owns product yet.
Aleksander Uznanski, Fractional Head of Product and CPO at ProductTrio

What's Included

Onboarding (Weeks 1 to 2)
  • Intro sessions with founders, team, and key stakeholders
  • Product & company audit: what's shipped, what's validated, what's still a guess
  • Alignment on scope, cadence, and the first 90 days of priorities
  • Shared roadmap, documentation, and reporting rhythm set up from day one
Ongoing Engagement (10 to 20h/week, monthly retainer)
  • Product strategy and roadmap ownership
  • Weekly leadership of standups, planning, and sprint reviews
  • Product discovery: customer interviews, opportunity mapping, assumption testing
  • Dual-Track Agile: discovery and delivery running concurrently, not sequentially
  • Stakeholder management: founders, investors, board updates
  • Coaching and upskilling the existing PMs, designers, or engineers
  • Product Operations setup: tools, ceremonies, documentation, knowledge management
  • Hiring support when you're ready to bring on a full-time replacement
Format
10 to 20h/week · Monthly retainer · Independent contractor · Remote or on-site
Recommended participants
Founder(s), product team, engineering & design leads

Common Problems We Solve

This is built for the gap between "we need product leadership" and "we can't yet justify a full-time hire":

The founder is still the de facto product manager.Squeezed between fundraising, hiring, and every product call, with no real time left to think about strategy.
Engineers are shipping, but nobody owns the outcomes.Plenty of output. No one can tell you whether any of it is actually moving the business.
Your PM is strong on delivery, thin on strategy.They can run a sprint. They can't yet own a roadmap or facilitate real discovery.
You need Product-Market Fit, not more features.The backlog keeps growing while the fundamentals - who it's for, why they need it - stay unconfirmed.
A full-time Head of Product feels like the wrong bet right now.A six-figure salary, plus the risk of a bad hire, at exactly the stage you can least afford either.
You're scaling from one product team to several.And you need an operating model in place before the cracks show.

Proven Track Record

Not theory. I've done this job, embedded, as the first and only product leader inside real companies:

Hired as the #1 product hire at this Swiss hiring-platform startup. Took it from zero to Product-Market Fit: grew the userbase from 0 to 1,000 B2C users and 60 B2B customers, while coaching 2 founders on product-led development.

Read the FOUND case study →

Led product for a 9-person team (2 designers, 7 engineers) building a neobanking app in Belgium. Navigated complex EU financial regulation, implementing full KYC/AML compliance while lifting onboarding conversion by 25%.

Read the elyps case study →

Hired as the first product person at this AI design tool (1M+ users). Grew MRR from $300K to $450K and the userbase from 500K to over 1M, while lifting Free-to-Paid conversion by 50%.

Read the UX Pilot case study →

Our Process

Weeks 1–2

Onboarding & Audit

I meet the team, review what's been built and what's been validated, and audit where the product actually stands versus where everyone assumes it stands. We align on scope, cadence, and the first 90 days.

Month 1

Own the Roadmap

I take ownership of the product vision, strategy, and roadmap, and align it with the business goals. We set up Dual-Track Agile, so discovery and delivery run side by side instead of one blocking the other.

Ongoing

Discovery + Delivery, in Parallel

A weekly cadence of customer interviews, experiments, and shipped work. I run the team through the same operating model I've used to take three companies toward Product-Market Fit.

Quarterly

Review & Reset

A structured review of what's working, what isn't, and what the next quarter's priorities should be. The roadmap gets adjusted based on evidence, not opinion.

When ready

Hiring Handoff

When the company is ready for a full-time Head of Product or CPO, I help define the role, shape the hiring process, and hand off cleanly - or keep going, if the fractional model still fits.

Why Choose Us

I embed. I don't just advise.

Most of what's labeled "fractional" is really advisory with a fancier title. I sit in your standups, own your roadmap, and make the calls - the way a full-time Head of Product actually would.

A track record of taking teams to PMF.

FOUND, elyps, and 20+ product organizations trained. This isn't the first time I've done this job - it's the fourth product I've helped take from 0 to 1.

Built for the in-between stage.

Too early for a full-time hire, but past the point where "the founder does it" still works. That gap - not before it, not after it - is exactly what this is for.

Founder empathy, not just PM theory.

I failed my first startup at 22. I coach like someone who's lived the ambiguity of building something from nothing - not someone reciting a framework from the sidelines.

The Product Trio operating model.

I set up your PM, Designer, and Engineer to work as one Product Trio - continuously in sync - not as a relay race between departments.

FAQs

What does "fractional" actually mean?
Fractional isn't a fancier word for freelancer. It means I plug into your company for a fraction of my time - typically 10 to 20 hours a week - but with the same ownership as a full-time hire: I'm in the standups, the roadmap, and the customer calls, on a monthly retainer as an independent contractor. Read more in what a fractional Head of Product actually does.
How is this different from the PMF Program?
The PMF Program is coaching: I guide your existing team through a structured methodology, and you keep full ownership of execution. This is different - I become your embedded product leader. I own the roadmap and make the product calls myself, the way a full-time Head of Product or CPO would.
How is this different from hiring a consultant or advisor?
A consultant hands you a deck and a set of recommendations. I do the hands-on work: running discovery, leading the team, and owning outcomes - not just advising someone else on what they should do.
How many hours a week is this?
Most engagements run 10 to 20 hours a week, set at the start based on your stage and needs. If you genuinely need 40 hours a week of product work, you need a full-time hire, not a fractional one - I'll tell you that directly.
How long is a typical engagement?
Most run 6 to 12 months. Some companies keep the fractional model going longer; others use it as a bridge until they're ready to hire full-time, and I support that transition either way.
Is this remote?
Remote-first, with on-site sessions where useful - workshops, quarterly reviews, team offsites. I've run this model with teams across Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, and the US.
What's the difference between this and the 0 to 1 Workshop?
The 0 to 1 Workshop is a single-day session to define your customer, value proposition, and validation plan. This is an ongoing role - I lead product for your company week after week, not just for a day.

Service Area

Available globally via remote engagement, with on-site sessions where useful. I've led product teams in Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, and the US, and trained startups and product organizations across Europe.

Ready for a product leader who actually owns it?

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