Strategic Product Leadership
How I See It
Strategy isn’t a vision statement. Product isn’t a roadmap. Leadership isn’t charisma.
Great product leaders act like CEOs — not from a desire to boss everyone around, but from a knowledge of how all of it fits together: the problem, the business, the doing, and the people who do it. That's me. I don't follow trends. I examine the underlying cause of what actually exists, provide a clear direction, and lead focused action — just like Rumelt's "kernel" of good strategy.
SVPG was right — empowered teams accomplish things. The rest is theatre.
Eric Ries reminds us: progress isn't output, it's validated learning.
Ben Horowitz is not shy about telling it like it is — leadership means making the hard choices no one else will.
And too many product teams still confuse motion with momentum.
I create teams that take ownership of results. I map product to revenue. I repair what is broken. No fluff. No cargo cult process. Just clarity, execution, and results.
What Drives Me
I'm attracted to the most perilous times — when a product plan disintegrates, a team loses confidence, or a roadmap no longer adds up. That's when reality kicks in.
What gets me going is turning complexity into traction. Getting vision and execution aligned. Asking the uncomfortable questions that nobody else will. Getting a founder to stop pitching fantasy and start building something customers actually want. Coaching a PM to think like a GM. Watching a stuck team suddenly accelerate — not because they're working harder, but because they're working smarter.
I don't play "feature velocity." I don't drive alignment through consensus. I drive momentum by ensuring the entire org — C-suite to squad — understands it, and they understand why it matters.
For when product is handled as a support function, the business loses its direction.
But when product leads with purpose? That's when you scale.
What I’ve Built
I’ve scaled unicorns, created platforms Fortune 100s depend on, and scaled fintechs from bootstrapped teams to 500+ employees. Yet I'm more than a product builder — I create teams, operating models, and cultures that scale.
At Reuters, I turned around a late-stage, misaligned product into a $5M business by restructuring the team, acquiring strategic partners, and closing business in 50 countries. At Kyriba, I led go-to-market for complex global clients while defining a product-solution-sales motion that didn't just sell — it stuck because of the value provided.
I've transitioned orgs from "ship it and pray" to outcome-driven execution. Restructured product and sales organizations to prevent them from tripping over each other. Assisted exec teams in ending the treatment of product as a delivery factory — and beginning to treat it as a strategic growth engine.
Other times that meant launching something new.
And sometimes it meant tearing something down.
Always, it meant change that mattered.