Product Leadership & Strategy

Product leadership for mission driven tech companies that want to grow.

Katrina Watson

Are you building an innovative product and ready to take it to the next level?

I specialise in helping technology start-ups to scale-up. I work with companies who have achieved product market fit, and are looking to grow and move fast, but in a sustainable way.

Some signs that you might need a fractional product leader:

  • Everyone is busy, but you're not confident you're building the right things — Prioritisation feels like managing a backlog rather than strategy.
  • Product, engineering, sales and marketing are all working in slightly different directions — Nobody is translating between them, and alignment takes more time and effort than it should.
  • Bottlenecks are appearing, slowing things down — You've looking to scale effectively, but can feel yourself becoming a bottleneck. You want to be involved, but don't have the time.
  • You want to build a strong product team and culture — You have started building out a product team, but they need coaching and mentorship.
  • The product that got you here was built to validate product market fit — You're starting to feel the cracks as you scale.

What working with me looks like

I mainly work with one company at a time, embedded as your fractional Head of Product or CPO.

  • Strategy clarity — working directly with you and the leadership team to get clear on where you're going and what you're explicitly not doing
  • Team structure and development — building or levelling up your product team so they can move fast, make good decisions, and do it without burning out
  • Cross-functional alignment — translating between product, engineering, commercial, and leadership so that everyone is pulling in the same direction
  • Prioritisation and ways of working — putting in place the frameworks that let you move quickly without needing everyone in every conversation

Why me?

I've built and led product functions at companies in exactly this stage of growth. I work across both strategic and operational levels.

I can sit in the room with the CEO and shape the company's product bets, and I can also work directly with the team to make those bets executable.

My strength is in alignment: connecting people and functions who don't naturally speak the same language, and making sure the work every team is doing is actually connected to what the company is trying to become.

Background

I've spent the last 20 years working in tech - across startups, scale-ups and my own companies. I've helped scale organisations across multiple markets and countries to over 1 million user accounts, and built a few 0 to 1 products along the way.

Recently I worked through a complex three-way company merger, leading product, and helping drive alignment, communication and collaboration across three companies so that everyone was moving towards the same common goals.

I've worked across the full product stack — design, development, marketing, support, and data — as well as closely with founders and business stakeholders. That perspective helps me communicate clearly across teams and departments to help get everyone aligned and focussed on the most important things, which I've found is the best way to build a great company.

I've also been a mentor and coach to product managers (across all levels), as well as developers, designers and marketers wanting to level up and learn how to build better products by becoming full-stack builders. I've seen how much of a difference the right mentorship can make to someone's career, and am passionate about helping people become better at their craft and do work that they care about.

Areas I work across

Product Strategy

  • Strategy & roadmapping
  • Experiments, data & analysis
  • Problem identification & solving
  • Discovery & research

Team & Culture

  • Team coaching & mentoring
  • Product thinking for non-PM teams & ICs
  • Stakeholder alignment

Systems & Practices

  • Process design & implementation
  • AI-augmented product practices

Thought Partnership

  • Founder sounding board
  • Strategic decision-making

Let's talk.

If you're building something to help make the world a better place and think we might be a good fit, I'd love to hear about it.