When you’ve become the bottleneck in your own product org — and you’re not ready for a full-time CPO.
I work with SaaS founders past early traction, when product decisions are compounding faster than one person can hold and you need someone who’s been here before.
Start a conversationAbout me.
I’ve spent 13 years in product — at companies figuring out what to build next, and at companies trying to scale something that was already working. The hardest part is almost always the same: getting clear on what the customer actually needs before everyone starts building.
I do fractional work because I like the concentrated version of the problem. You bring me in when something is stuck, when you need strategic direction that isn’t coming from inside, or when you want to build the product team and operating model that will carry you through the next stage of growth.
I’m also building my own product. newjourn is an AI travel companion I’ve been thinking about for fifteen years. It was never buildable before — not without a team, not without significant funding. AI changed that. Software engineering, which used to be the scarce and expensive part of building a product, is now genuinely accessible. That’s what makes this moment so interesting. I’m building newjourn with Martin, and I’m documenting the whole thing publicly — what works, what doesn’t, what I’m learning. My goal is to share the tools, the frameworks, and the hard-won experience with the next generation of builders — the people who are only now able to build the products they’ve always imagined.
Based in Auckland. When I’m not in product mode, I’m out running, feeding my dog, eating things that are genuinely too spicy, and listening to music nobody else at the table recognises.
You’re probably in one of these situations.
- Your product team is shipping, but you’re not sure it’s shipping the right things.
- Product decisions are landing on you as the founder — and it’s time you don’t have.
- You have PMs, but no one is setting strategic direction.
- You’re at a commercial inflection and need the product to perform differently, not just faster.
- You’re preparing to hire a full-time CPO and need to define the role before you recruit.
What working together looks like.
Two engagement models, depending on what you need.
Part-time product lead
I join your leadership team on a part-time basis — typically 2–3 days per week — and act as your Head of Product. I set direction, work directly with your team, and make the calls that need a senior product mind. Ongoing engagement, reviewed quarterly.
Fixed scope, defined outcome
A time-bounded engagement built around a specific deliverable: a product strategy reset, a jobs-to-be-done synthesis from customer research, a team operating model, or a roadmap overhaul. Typically 6–9 weeks. You leave with something concrete and immediately actionable.
Where this comes from.
Thirteen years of product leadership across B2B SaaS, fintech, and scale-ups. The outcomes below are from roles — not consulting clients — but they’re the same work a fractional engagement demands.
Product Product Strategy Reset
- Ran a customer discovery programme — 35+ interviews, 6 site visits — synthesised into five core jobs-to-be-done anchoring product direction and roadmap investment.
- Facilitated a leadership offsite producing a refreshed product vision, product bet hypotheses, and a 30-day action plan, documented as a repeatable playbook.
- Authored investor-facing strategy materials distinguishing verified customer evidence from labelled strategic hypotheses.
- Designed and delivered a company-wide Design Sprint resulting in 27 prototypes aligned to the new strategic direction.
Revenue, scale, and platform strategy
- Grew paid conversion >10% in the U.S. market — NZ$7.2M first-year LTV — by redesigning the subscription experience to match local buying behaviours.
- Scaled a local prototype (0→1) into a global revenue driver across Xero’s highest-growth regions (1→10).
- Defined the 5-year platform strategy; secured executive buy-in for long-term investment in scaling bottlenecks.
- Designed partner channel experiments — plan anchoring, pricing psychology, AI-supported plan selection — projected to deliver 10–15% CMRR uplift.
- Built and coached the Platform PM organisation; established standards for how platform teams deliver measurable value.
Product consulting
- Spearheaded product delivery for mBook — Germany’s largest school book publisher’s first fully digital product launch.
How I work.
I work from customer evidence first. Before strategy, before roadmap, before prioritisation — I want to know what customers are actually trying to do, and whether the product helps or hinders that. Discovery isn’t a phase; it’s a discipline.
I apply empowered team models, jobs-to-be-done as the unit of customer understanding, and opportunity solution trees to connect discovery to delivery decisions. Frameworks are tools for the situation in front of us, not religion.
I’m comfortable in executive and investor conversations. I know how to translate product work into commercial language — and I know when to push back on the brief rather than execute it.
What I’m building.
newjourn — AI-powered travel companion
Co-founded with Martin Heckmann. A travel companion that reduces the cognitive load of planning complex journeys — from first idea to booked itinerary. Built on React 18, Supabase, and Gemini 2.5 Flash with an agentic architecture.
I build newjourn the same way I’d work with a client: customer discovery first, evidence-led decisions, unit economics considered from the start. It’s a live reference for the AI product thinking I bring to engagements.
Follow the build →
Writing from the build.
Applied AI product work — what it actually looks like to build with LLMs, not what the press releases say.
December 2025
Are AI Token Costs Eating Your Budget?
The unit economics of building with LLMs — how chatty agent design becomes a financial liability at scale, and what we changed in newjourn’s architecture to fix it.
December 2025
Aligning AI with Human Values: Best Practices for PMs
Narrow AI is already an alignment problem. What product leaders owe their users — and the concrete design choices that make AI transparent and controllable.
November 2025
Automate Your Blog Writing with Agentic AI
Ten days building a 4-agent content pipeline. The lessons apply directly to any product with orchestrated AI workflows — roles, handoffs, and where to keep the human in the loop.
All writing →
Who I work with best.
Good fit
- Past early traction (roughly Series A on), no CPO yet
- Product is the primary growth lever
- Ready to make decisions from customer evidence
- Willing to reset direction if the evidence calls for it
- Want a senior operator, not an order-taker
Not a fit
- Need someone to manage tickets and ceremonies
- Pre-product-market-fit with no customer access
- Want validation more than challenge
- Decision-making is centralised and won’t change
Start a conversation.
If you’re in the window where this sounds right, let’s talk. No intake form — just an email.
aleksandra.westfal@googlemail.com