Context
KIMO is a B2B EdTech SaaS built around AI-driven learning paths. I joined as Head of Product, and because the function was a team of one, I ran the product owner work alongside the leadership role: strategy and roadmap on one side, backlog and sprint delivery on the other. Three platforms, web, iOS, and Android, with a distributed engineering and design team of 15+.
The problem
Early-stage product leadership means everything is your job. Roadmap definition, backlog grooming, API design trade-offs, and the investor narrative all land on the same desk, under startup constraints where every misallocated sprint is expensive.
What I did
Owned the full product lifecycle: a quarterly roadmap tied to commercial goals, broken down into sprint-level delivery the team could actually execute.
Carried the product owner role day to day, because there was nobody to hand it to: backlog, refinement, acceptance criteria, and the prioritisation calls that came with them.
Made the API and platform design calls with engineering. Those decisions determine whether month 18 is spent shipping features or repaying technical debt.
Built the metrics discipline: engagement and retention instrumentation that separated feature theatre from actual usage.
Carried the product story to the board and investors, translating delivery into narrative.
The outcome
The platform reached 400K users at a 16% DAU/MAU ratio, which is engagement rather than acquisition alone. The lesson I took into every engagement since: a roadmap is a promise about outcomes, not a list of features.
Need the same thing done? Here is how fractional product leadership works.