All
Transforming a Service Business into a Product Platform
Client:
SignalFlare AI
When:
Q1 2024 - Q3 2024
Stage:
Pre-Seed
Role:
Product Manager
SITUATION
Despite their success as a consulting business delivering high-value insights, SignalFlare hit a scaling ceiling. Their pioneering work in data modeling, metrics development, and Snowflake data sharing was locked in custom service delivery. Engineering resources were split between reactive customer needs and product development, resulting in inconsistent progress.
Without structured product operations, prioritization became difficult and development velocity suffered. The fundamental challenge: systematically transform a successful services business into a product-led company while maintaining value delivery for existing clients.
APPROACH
My comprehensive transformation strategy had four key components:
First, I developed strategic frameworks by conducting thorough discovery sessions with the founding team to understand their service delivery mechanisms. I translated these complex workflows into a Jobs-to-be-Done framework that mapped customer journeys, decision points, and data flows.
Second, I built product operations infrastructure including a custom product management environment in Notion that created a seamless pipeline from strategic vision to tactical execution. This established clear pathways from epics to projects to PRDs to designs and finally to development tickets in Linear.
Third, I facilitated over 10 hours of innovation sessions with founders to craft both long-term product vision and immediate MVP strategy. Together we developed sequencing plans identifying foundational projects critical to enabling subsequent initiatives and created strategic prioritization matrices balancing customer value, business impact, and technical feasibility.
Finally, I activated processes by implementing the roadmap using integrated tooling (Notion, Figma, Linear) to ensure consistent development velocity, establishing quality assurance protocols, and creating feedback loops to incorporate service team insights into product development.
OUTCOMES
The transformation delivered significant impact:
Strategic Clarity: Evolved from zero product roadmap to a detailed timeline with clear sequencing and dependencies
Operational Excellence: Created organized systems for consistent prioritization and rapid decision-making
Development Velocity: Established predictable sprint cadences that steadily increased feature delivery
Vision Alignment: Defined an MVP strategy with clear go-to-market milestones
Beyond these immediate results, the engagement laid a sustainable foundation for SignalFlare's evolution by creating frameworks for translating service insights into product features, establishing intellectual property in methodologies that could be consistently applied, and building a scalable product operations model that could grow with the organization.
During our partnership, SignalFlare won Snowflake's highly competitive Startup Challenge. Read about it here.