The fractional Head of Product founders hire when the roadmap is the bottleneck.
Your engineering ships. Your customers are real. But every product decision still routes back to you — because nobody else has permission to kill an idea. We embed a senior product pod — a lead product leader, a senior PM, and AI-accelerated workflows — install the system that makes decisions without you, and stay until you don’t need us.
47+ engagements
10+ industries
$223M+ follow-on funding unlocked
100% Job Success · Top 1% Expert-Vetted product leaders
What a fractional Head of Product actually does
Senior product leadership, part-time — the strategic 20% of the role that determines whether the other 80% is pointed at the right thing. Director/VP-level judgment without the $250–350K hire and the 4–6 month search.
Own strategy & roadmap
And defend it against the week’s loudest idea.
Run the decision cadence
Discovery, validation, prioritization — and the authority to say no.
Lead or coach your PMs
Or be the product function until you’re ready to hire one.
Manage stakeholders
Exec, engineering, and GTM stop pulling the roadmap in three directions.
Own the metrics
So “is this working?” has an answer that isn’t a feeling.
The part most fractional PMs won’t say out loud: the job is mostly judgment under pressure from the founder. Anyone can maintain a backlog. The value is in the pushback.
Built for founder-led teams between “we ship” and “we ship the right things”
This is for you if
- Seed–Series B, engineering shipping, no senior product owner — or a founder doing PM badly at 11pm
- Traction is real but the roadmap is a wishlist shaped by the loudest customer
- You’re 6–12 months from a full-time Head of Product and want the function built before the hire
- Your AI prototype needs to become an actual product
This is not for you if
- You want a pair of hands to execute what you’ve already decided — we’ll push back; that’s what the retainers pay for
- You only need full-time delivery capacity — a senior contractor PM is cheaper
- Pre-product, pre-signal idea stage — start with the Product Health Check instead
Your real alternatives, honestly compared
A $300K, 6-month bet
The right end state — and we’ll help you hire them. We start in days, cost a fraction, then write the role spec and hand off an operating system instead of a mess.
The hire works because of the engagement.
They execute what they’re told
The expensive failure isn’t slow execution — it’s confident execution of the wrong thing. 47+ engagements of pattern recognition behind every call, and a team willing to have the uncomfortable conversation.
Senior judgment, not a senior pair of hands.
They ship slides and leave
We build working teams and stay — our three largest clients kept us 1.5 to 2.5+ years each. Fixed monthly price.
No decks. Real teams. Real shipping.
You, six months more tired
Every quarter you stay the product brain is another quarter the team ships the wrong things.
And another quarter further from a hire that works.
How an engagement runs
Fit Finder or a 30-minute call
We’ll tell you honestly if fractional is the wrong shape for your problem — about a third of the time it is, and a Diagnostic or Sprint fits better.
Weeks 1–2 — pattern diagnosis
Six ways an MVP gets stuck. Four ways engineering loses trust in product. Three ways founders mis-prioritize. Week one, we tell you which pattern you’re in. Week two, you have a 90-day plan.
Months 1–3 — install the operating system
Decision rights, cadence, customer-signal loop, roadmap discipline. Strategy decisions get made on schedule — without routing through you.
Ongoing — run it, then hand it off
Monthly roadmap reviews, quarterly strategy. When you’re ready for the full-time hire, we define the role, support the search, and hand off a function that works.
What it costs
From $20K /month, fixed
$30K/month for multi-product or complex stakeholder environments. 3-month minimum, then month-to-month with 30-day notice. No annual lock-in. For comparison: a full-time Head of Product runs $250–350K/yr fully loaded and takes 4–6 months to hire.
Not sure you need ongoing leadership?
Start with the Product Health Check — a 2-week fixed-fee diagnostic ending in a 90-day plan. Most fractional clients start there.
Clients keep this engagement for years. That’s the real review.
Mental-health platform
Product leadership through rapid scaling; helped unlock $25M in follow-on funding.
Digital forensics company
“His ability to translate high-level objectives into actionable roadmaps ensures every product effort remains strategically relevant.”
Founder-led MVP launch
“Wil is not afraid to have tough conversations when he knows there is a better way to execute.”
Agency partnership
“Wil understands the toughest part of this role is the ability to push back when necessary.”
“Knowing Wil is at the helm feels like entrusting projects to myself, only amplified. It grants me peace of mind.”
— Jason A., founder
47+engagements
10+industries
$223M+follow-on funding
100%JSS · Top 1% Expert-Vetted
Frequently asked questions
How much does a fractional Head of Product cost?
Market rates for fractional product leadership run $5K–$25K+/month depending on seniority and scope. Our engagements start at $20,000/month fixed — Director/VP-level leadership with a senior PM and AI-accelerated execution included — with $30K/month for multi-product or complex stakeholder environments. Compare that to $250–350K/yr fully loaded for the equivalent full-time hire.
Fractional Head of Product vs. fractional product manager — what’s the difference?
A fractional PM executes within a product function: backlog, specs, delivery. A fractional Head of Product builds and runs the function: strategy, prioritization, decision rights, coaching, hiring. If product decisions still route through the founder, you need the latter.
How many hours per week do I get?
The wrong question — you’re buying decisions, not hours. Practically: 4–8 hours/week of senior leadership presence, plus a dedicated senior PM and AI-accelerated execution behind it. Because it’s a pod and not one person, the function keeps running regardless of any single calendar. Outcomes are scoped monthly, not metered hourly.
How fast can you start?
Days, not months. Diagnosis starts week one; a 90-day plan by week two.
What if we already have PMs?
Even better. We coach them — one CTO client paid for personal coaching after the engagement. The goal is a team that runs the system without us.
Do you work across industries? Ours is unusual.
47+ engagements across 10+ industries. PM craft is industry-agnostic; pattern recognition transfers. We’ll tell you in week one which failure pattern you’re in, because we’ve seen it before.
What about AI products specifically?
A growing share of our work is AI products — agent platforms, ML/NLP engines, AI monetization. The common shape: a working prototype that needs to become a product. AI doesn’t know if you should build it. That’s the job.
What happens when we’re ready for a full-time hire?
That’s the planned exit. We define the role spec, support the search, and hand off a working operating system. Most clients keep us 1–3 years, then hire.
What’s your notice period?
30 days, after a 3-month minimum. No annual contracts. Multi-year retention happens because clients renew, not because they’re locked in.
You don’t have a roadmap problem. You have a decision-making problem dressed up as one.
Let’s find out which pattern you’re in.