Fractional product leadership · Ben Brown
When the team is stuck, I find what to do first.
I'm Ben Brown. I help founder-led and growing product teams find the real problem, get leaders aligned, and get shipping. Then I leave behind people who can run it without me.
- new ARR from a product launch
- $1.3M
- customers in the first year
- 137
- new users in three months
- 3×
- annual core growth, sustained through an integration
- 40%
- months to ship, after a turnaround
- 18 → 1
How I work
Take the front. Then hand it off.
In a paceline, one rider takes the wind at the front so the group moves faster, then rotates back so others can lead. That's the whole model.
More on the approach →- 01
Find the real problem
Teams usually know something is wrong. I find what's actually driving it, using customer evidence instead of opinion.
- 02
Get leaders aligned
Stuck decisions get made. I turn competing priorities into one clear answer to what we do first.
- 03
Get teams shipping
A simple, repeatable rhythm (hypothesis, prioritize, design, build) that turns strategy into releases.
- 04
Leave leaders behind
Like riders in a paceline, I take the hard stretch at the front, then rotate someone on your team into the lead.
Selected work
Stuck situations, moving again
9 → 1
competing bets narrowed to one platform thesis
Clarity on what to do first
A founder-led company with a big AI vision, nine competing bets, and a retention problem. I found what was really driving churn and set the order of work, and the team is now shipping that strategy.
Read the case study →$1.3M
incremental ARR across 137 customers
From split steering committee to $1.3M in new ARR
Launched a new business-process product seven months after joining by pointing the roadmap at what was blocking deals. It reached $1.3M in incremental ARR across 137 customers.
Read the case study →3×
new-user acquisition in three months
Building a metric-driven growth engine
A top-three wine app was running plenty of growth experiments without a clear way to tell which ones mattered. With shared metrics and a weekly rhythm, new-user acquisition tripled in three months.
Read the case study →The part that lasts
Leaders I've helped grow
The work isn't done when the roadmap is clear. It's done when someone on your team can run it, whether that's a PM ready for the next level or a founder ready to step back.
- Revenue-enablement SaaSA principal designer became the company's product owner
- LucidBoth PMs I inherited were promoted
- VasionSeveral ICs promoted as they took ownership of outcomes
- SippdThe founder built a repeatable, metric-driven operating rhythm
- PluralsightA leader I brought in from outside product became a Director
In their words
What clients say
At Sippd, we built an AI-powered wine discovery platform that ranked among the top three Alcohol & Beverage apps in both the Apple App Store and Google Play. We had strong product momentum and were running numerous growth experiments, but we needed greater clarity around what to test, how to measure it, and where to focus our resources for user acquisition, CAC and revenue generation.
Ben brought that clarity quickly. He worked closely with our data scientist to define the metrics that mattered, improve our analytics tracking so we could trust the results, and establish a disciplined weekly cadence for reviewing experiments and prioritizing what to test next. He also helped shape our feature discovery, product-led growth, user acquisition and retention strategies, and the design of our AI-enabled wine subscription program.
During his engagement, new-user acquisition tripled in three months while our cost per acquisition declined. Just as importantly, Ben became a trusted advisor on the most consequential decisions I faced as a founder, including how to evaluate inbound acquisition interest and navigate the broader challenges of building and scaling a startup. He combined analytical rigor with sound strategic judgment and made both our growth engine and our decision-making stronger.