Six months minimum. One to two days a week. I join your team as fractional CPO and run the product function until the structure belongs to your team, not to me.
This page is the whole deal: the format, the fee, the guarantee, and what happens after you apply. If we end up on a call, it will match what you read here.
Six-Month Fractional CPO Engagement
Dave Saunders · Base Reality Group
I join your team as fractional Chief Product Officer and run the product function: roadmap, priorities, product and market definition, risk discipline, and the commercial story that carries your next round. Your team does the work with me and learns the method as we go. When the engagement ends, the structure belongs to them.
One to two days a week, about ten hours, inside your company. On your standups, in your design reviews, in front of your board when it helps.
$10,000 to $25,000 per month. Stage and scope set the number, and we fix it before we start.
Six months minimum. Product structure isn't built in a sprint, and I don't sell engagements shorter than the work.
I run a small number of engagements at a time, by design. The work needs full attention, and the advice only stays honest when I'm not overextended.
Five topics, sequenced for where your product is: product and market definition, the productization roadmap, quality culture and regulatory pathway, verification, validation, and design discipline, and the go-to-market and investor narrative. The full breakdown is on Work With Me.
By the end of six months, your company has a clear, actionable plan to reach your next real gate. For medical devices, that means a defined path through FDA and to market. For other regulated or safety-critical hardware, the equivalent certification and market path. For everything else, first revenue and the next funding milestone. If you don't have that plan, I keep working with you at no additional cost until you do. One condition: your team shows up and does the work.
You're building a real product: software, SaaS, connected devices, medical devices, robotics, or any product where quality and reliability decide whether it sells. My deepest credential is medical devices and surgical robotics; most of what I've shipped is software.
You have a working prototype, a funded company, and a team.
Nobody owns the product full time, and you can feel it: the roadmap shifts with the loudest voice in the room, and the structure underneath is thinner than anyone wants to admit.
Two boundaries worth naming. I'm not a regulatory consultant; the pathway is part of the work, not the whole of it. And I'm not a fundraising advisor; I don't raise money for companies or take fees on a raise.
Not there yet? Start with the $500 working session, or with the book and newsletter at davesaunders.net. I want your business to succeed either way.
You apply. Seven questions about your company, your product, and what success looks like in six months. It takes about ten minutes.
We talk. If the application looks like a fit, I set up a call. It costs you nothing, and I'm not selling on it. We work through where the product actually stands.
You get a scoped proposal. The fee, the cadence, and the first ninety days, in writing. If it's not a fit, I say so and point you somewhere useful instead.