Turn your startup into a scalable product-led business
Product-Led Growth & Product Management Leadership for early-stage B2B SaaS Startups targeting $10m ARR
Hey, I’m Vlad 👋
I’m a Product-Led Growth enthusiast and Product Management veteran with 12+ years of hands-on experience, building and growing products for several startups, scale-ups and my own ventures, in both B2B and B2C.
I love working with brilliant people and multidisciplinary teams, building and growing customer-centric products, and scaling businesses in a sustainable manner. Some of my career highlights include:
- managed a B2B2C mobile product line targeting the US market and generating over $20m in annual revenues while leading product at a London-based high-growth scale-up
- streamlined the customer experience and contributed to the growth of the UK’s most popular peer-to-peer lending fintech company at the time
- co-partnered in the genesis and growth journey of a leading mobile marketing agency based in Paris and focused on driving user acquisition for apps and games targeting the US
- bootstrapped, scaled and sold a profitable rewards-based mobile app business targeting the US
After operating in 4 European tech capitals (London🇬🇧, Paris🇫🇷, Berlin🇩🇪 and Bucharest 🇷🇴), I am now on a mission to help early-stage B2B SaaS startups worldwide scale through Product-Led Growth motions. 🚀
I leverage 12+ years of product experience (in-house & own ventures)
To help early-stage B2B SaaS startups scale through Product-Led Growth motions
Your Goals & Obstacles
You are a B2B SaaS founder currently generating somewhere between $0.5m – $5m ARR. Your current growth strategy is either primarily founder-led, or your self-serve product-led funnel is not quite where it should be.
You are aware that you need to optimise your Product-Led Growth motion to scale your business sustainably, but you don’t know where to start and feel a bit overwhelmed. 😔
You may find it difficult to clearly articulate who your ideal customer segment is, what is the core value that the users actually get from your product, and how to package and price your offering effectively. 🧐
You may sometimes feel like your Product and Go-To-Market teams are not entirely aligned on what truly drives value for your customers, how to measure it, and how to increase it consistently. 🤔
As time is your most valuable asset, you’d like to avoid making unnecessary mistakes. For this reason, you are looking to partner with an experienced product person who can work closely with you and your teams for a brief period, helping you to optimise your Product-Led Growth motion and develop your own PLG playbook. 📈
How I Can Help
Great teams don’t waste time by doing random acts of product growth and hoping for the best. And neither should we. I can help by working closely with you and your Product & Go-To-Market teams to optimise your Product-Led Growth motion and develop your own PLG playbook by understanding your goals and obstacles, identifying your market opportunities and specific gaps, outlining a prioritised plan of action, implementing it and measuring the results. Here’s how it works: 👇
Step 1: Discovery Call
The first step is for us to arrange a no-strings-attached 30-min Discovery Call and determine if we are a fit. During this session we’ll touch on your product, target market, go-to-market motions, high-level metrics and team structure, and discuss your goals and obstacles for the next 3-6 months.
Step 2: Audit & Plan
If we decide to work together, the next step will be for me to assess where you are on the journey towards building a scalable product-led growth motion. As part of this process, I will work closely with you and your team to understand your particular gaps and market opportunities, and outline a prioritised plan for addressing them.
Step 3: Implement & Measure
Once we have identified the key areas of focus, we can start implementing our prioritised plan of action by adopting a scientific mindset and focusing on continuously testing and validating our working hypotheses. Throughout this process, I will effectively become your co-pilot and a sleeves-rolled-up mentor for your team.
In essence, my goal is to help you scale your business sustainably by working side-by-side with your Product and Go-To-Market teams to optimise your Product-Led Growth motion and develop your own PLG playbook, so that you will no longer need me after 6-12 months of working together.
Use Cases & Outcomes
Over the years, I have seen first-hand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to building and growing customer-centric products while leading cross-functional teams, and have developed my own battle-tested collaborative approach focused on driving consistent outcomes and learnings while adapting based on evidence and insights.
Below is a summary of the use cases and outcomes you can expect to achieve while working together. 👇
Product Strategy
Drive organisational focus and get crystal clear on your product strategy by segmenting your market, understanding the needs and purchase behaviours of your customers, assessing your competition through the lens of your users, and uncovering untapped opportunities to leverage.
Define your Ideal Customer Profile with precision and align your Product and Go-To-Market teams around it to create organisational focus.
Identify your User & Buyer Personas along with their pain points and Jobs-To-Be-Done to gauge what motivates prospects to consider your offering, what turns them into customers, and how to attract more of them into your funnel.
Map out your Competitive Landscape through the lens of your customers’ jobs-to-be-done to understand how well other solutions meet their needs and identify gaps to leverage.
Define your Positioning in a way that makes your value offering stand out in a meaningful manner, grabs the attention of your visitors, and compels them to try out your product.
Get a grip on the Use Cases that your customers value most and nail down your Value Metric to measure, monetise and expand your value offering effectively.
Understand the language spoken by your customers and craft Messaging that conveys your value offering in a way that compels prospects to progress through the funnel.
Growth Levers
Deconstruct your growth model and identify the most promising growth levers to double down on based on data and customer insights.
Map out your Customer Journey, diagnose bottlenecks, and align your team around the right Leading KPIs to monitor and improve.
Identify opportunities to create Growth Loops that accelerate your customer acquisition motions in a compounding manner.
Optimise your Onboarding Flow and increase Activation by balancing the sales & self-service motions, reducing friction points, increasing messaging relevancy and shortening time-to-value.
Discover your most promising growth levers through Customer Interviews, and leverage Design Thinking and Jobs-To-Be-Done techniques to uncover actionable trends and patterns in terms of needs and behaviours.
Nail down your Pricing Metric and optimise your Pricing & Packaging to increase LTV and reduce CAC Payback Period.
Identify opportunities for implementing Upgrade Paths and Save Flows to drive revenue expansion and reduce churn.
Operating Model
Develop an operating model that enables your product growth team to generate consistent outcomes and learnings by adopting a scientific mindset focused on seeking evidence and insights, and by fostering a culture of rapid experimentation and validation.
Implement a Continuous Discovery & Outcome-driven Experimentation process to identify, prioritise, test and validate growth hypotheses, and double down on the ones that work.
Create team alignment by leveraging the North Star and OKR frameworks to set outcome-oriented goals, define success and track progress.
Set up Customer Feedback Loops to continuously feed your decision-making process with actionable insights.
Hire Product Managers like a FAANG company would, and build a High-Performing Product Team through hands-on coaching and mentoring.
Plans & Pricing
Hire me as a fractional product leader & hands-on growth consultant to help you optimise your Product-Led Growth motion and develop your own PLG playbook, by working side-by-side with your Product and Go-To-Market teams for a brief period.
5 hours/week
5 hours per week is best for founders and teams looking for strategic advice, feedback and guidance, but no execution.
10 hours/week
10 hours per week is best for founders and teams looking for strategy, hands-on product coaching and lightweight execution.
20 hours/week
20 hours per week is best for founders and teams looking for strategy, hands-on product leadership and high-volume execution.
5 hours/week
5 hours per week is best for founders and teams looking for strategic advice, feedback and guidance, but no execution.
10 hours/week
10 hours per week is best for founders and teams looking for strategy, hands-on product coaching and lightweight execution.
20 hours/week
20 hours per week is best for founders and teams looking for strategy, hands-on product leadership and high-volume execution.
5 hours/week
5 hours per week is best for founders and teams looking for strategic advice, feedback and guidance, but no execution.
10 hours/week
10 hours per week is best for founders and teams looking for strategy, hands-on product coaching and lightweight execution.
20 hours/week
20 hours per week is best for founders and teams looking for strategy, hands-on product leadership and high-volume execution.
- To offer a high-quality service, I work with a maximum of 3 clients at a time for a total of up to 25 billable hours per week.
- Pause, downgrade or cancel your weekly subscription anytime through your Stripe customer portal. No minimum contract length required.
- Prices displayed do not include local or value-added taxes. You can pay in USD, EUR or GBP (your currency of choice).
If you’re not sure whether I can help, feel free to get in touch anyway so we can discuss and find out. I love to connect with founders and product folks, and I’d be happy to point you in the right direction!
Values & Guiding Principles
I’ve been in tech for more than 15 years now, worked with a wide range of personalities from all walks of life, and seen a great deal of successes and failures when it comes to building and growing products as a team.
And I’ve come to realise that, apart from luck, success vitally requires active collaboration towards achieving a common goal, continuously seeking the external perspective, staying humble, nimble and adaptable when faced with the market realities, adopting a methodical and holistic approach, and above all, being ruthlessly intentional and focused.
Success also requires us to continuously reflect on our values and guiding principles. Mine are:
Be intentional in everything you do – Life is too short to let it go to waste.
Amplify others – Never put other people down. Instead, elevate them.
You are what you do – People emulate what they see, not what you say. Lead by example.
Product is a team sport – The “great man” theory of history is a sexist fallacy. Success requires a multi-skilled and thought-diverse group of people to collaborate and work together towards achieving a common goal.
Lead with context – Don’t just tell others what to do. Explain why, bring them on board, and aim to co-create to produce everlasting impact.
Meet your customers where they are – Don’t fall in love with the problem, fall in love with your audience. Understand your users’ needs, behaviours and motivations, empathise with them, and seek to help them in a value-generating way.
Adopt a scientist mindset – See ideas and plans as mere hypotheses and always seek to test and validate your assumptions. Embracing the right thinking and processes is 10x more valuable than having all the answers (hint: no one does).
Don’t be like the Ancient Greeks, be like the Romans – Be process-driven and results-oriented, and get stuff done. Perfection is the enemy of done. So be pragmatic and don’t reinvent the wheel.
Give before you ask – Crucial in business, and even more so in life. Lead with value, be authentic, and always seek to help first. People love to give back. Generosity breeds generosity.
Vagueness is your enemy – Communicate value concretely. Reuse the language of your target audience to win over hearts and minds. Be precise. Document your thoughts and plans. What’s not written down, doesn’t exist.
Study the greats and become greater – While there are no shortcuts to success, there are methods that can shorten the journey and make it less arduous. Study those who have already walked your path and are now 1-2 levels above you, understand their thinking and modus operandi, and apply what makes the most sense for your circumstances.
I feel fortunate to have met a lot of talented and inspiring people along the way, who have shaped me into who I am today. And I now feel grateful to find myself in a position where I can give back, and continue to connect with brilliant and incredible people all over the world. Let’s connect on Linkedin!
FAQs
To offer a high-quality service, I work with a maximum of 3 clients at a time, for a total of up to 25 billable hours per week.
No, I do not outsource any client work. You and your teams will always work directly with me.
A typical engagement lasts 6-12 months. I see myself as a temporary helper whose aim is to assist you and your team in developing your own Product-Led Growth playbook, so that by the end of our collaboration you will no longer need me.
Just like a typical weekly subscription. After the Discovery Call, if we decide to work together, just head over to Plans & Pricing and sign up for your preferred weekly plan through Stripe. Once the initial payment is confirmed, we can start planning the work (payments are upfront).
Of course. If it’s better suited to your circumstances, we can begin our collaboration with the lowest weekly plan and consider an upgrade only if/when it makes sense for your needs (provided that I will have the available bandwidth at that time).
I do not accept equity or other forms of payment in lieu of cash, sorry. I only accept cash and handle all payments via Stripe as per the weekly subscription plans outlined in Plans & Pricing.
I don’t usually offer fixed days (e.g. Monday for client A, Tuesday for client B). Instead, I prefer to distribute the committed hours throughout the week, and reply to questions and take calls at times convenient for everyone.
You can position me internally as a fractional product leader & hands-on growth consultant helping you to optimise your Product-Led Growth motion and develop your own PLG playbook, by working side-by-side with your Product and Go-To-Market teams for a brief period.
I pretty much work remotely. That said, I am very open to travelling if we can find an arrangement that works for everyone, as I do believe that face-to-face interactions are invaluable for building rapport and a sense of camaraderie. I’m based in Europe, hold 2 passports (British🇬🇧 + Romanian🇷🇴), and when not travelling, I spend my time between London and Bucharest.
Personalised artifacts and strategic deliverables are documents, plans and processes that I can create (e.g. product roadmap, customer journey map, user/buyer personas, product requirements, KPI planning, OKRs, etc).
Not at all. Balancing a self-serve + sales-assisted motion is a pragmatic approach to consider depending on context, your target customer segment and their purchase behaviour, as well as how finely tuned your user experience and onboarding flow are.
I do not create proposals prior to starting the work, sorry. If we decide to work together after the Discovery Call, then the best way to invest our time is by signing up for a weekly subscription plan and commencing the audit and planning phase.
Just like with any other subscription service, you have complete control over your billing schedule. You can pause, downgrade or cancel the weekly subscription at any time through your Stripe client portal. No minimum contract length required.
I do not offer discounts, sorry. As a fellow entrepreneur, I hope you can understand that I also have a business to run. When I’m not working with clients, I spend my time learning and connecting with mentors and industry peers to keep my game sharp and provide a high-quality service.
Due to the time invested, there are no refunds for the fractional & consulting work, except in extraordinary circumstances. Given the nature of the subscription model though, you are only paying week-to-week and can cancel anytime.
Holidays are always planned and communicated in advance. As for sick days, I try to make up for them during the billing cycle. If I’m not able to honour my weekly commitment in terms of billable hours, you’ll get a rebate.
Given the nature of my service, I usually report directly to the CEO or product co-founder (i.e. you!). Don’t worry, since I’m not an employee, I don’t generate overheads (e.g. employee benefits, perks, etc). I’m here to help you.
We use a shared agenda in a Google Doc, where we can both add topics to cover. Typically, we review the progress of the initiatives that I help with, deep-dive into your high-priority topics, and discuss best practices and opportunities for improving your organisation’s product-led growth approach.