CPO as a Service
Over the past decade, I've held product leadership positions with 13 tech scaleups and large organisations as a Chief Product Officer (CPO), with each engagement lasting approx 9-12 months. Throughout this time, I've consistently applied core product principles, customer-centricity, design thinking, and strategic frameworks across various industries like MarTech, Media, Publishing, eCommerce, Fintech, Robotics, and Healthcare.
I've successfully led large teams using a coaching and collaborative leadership style to drive impactful results. In recognition of my track record and contributions to the industry, I had the honour of receiving the prestigious Best Product Visionary award from the PMAs.
Case Studies — Interim Chief Product Officer (CPO)
The interim CPO is a fully embedded model where I work full-time as a C-Suite executive with an organisation and take full responsibility for the day-to-day operations, including but not limited to people management, decision-making, coaching, hiring, regulatory, compliance, and customer, board, investor and partner meetings.
The following case studies reflect the roles where I was brought in to provide guidance, leadership and stability during periods of transition, crisis or rapid growth. In these roles, I collaborated closely with teams and took organisations out of high-intensity adrenaline fuelled stressful situations towards sustainable and stable growth. It goes without saying that none of these achievements is mine alone, and some exceptionally talented people have supported me as a leader and contributed to these results.
Featured iCPO Case Study
Ada Health — Grew Ada’s Consumer and Enterprise business by building a high-performing Product Org and a comprehensive product strategy
The Ask
Ada faced a leadership gap and appointed me as an Executive Leadership Team (ELT) member to lead a company of 400+ people and manage Ada’s product portfolio comprising Consumer, Enterprise and Partner products.
Ada.com →
The Approach
With immense support from peers, direct reports and teams, I developed a comprehensive product strategy and hired more than 40 people with a mix of perm and contract staff to deliver on time-sensitive and critical healthcare initiatives like Covid, Diabetes and Lab Tests.
I led the org redesign in line with the product strategy covering 25+ product teams across Product, Design, Data, Medical and Tech.
I participated in board and investor meetings and worked closely with the CCO & COO to operationalise key business objectives and data-driven decision-making.
Results
The org redesign streamlined decision-making, enhanced productivity, and improved focus, retention, culture and time-to-market for providing value to customers.
The organisation became a lot more agile and customer-centric, and the product craft at Ada became world-class, focusing on discovery and faster iterations in close collaboration with customers and data, marketing, ops and medical teams.
Ada expanded into new markets, received MDR certification, doubled its revenue and drastically increased the overall user base.
Engagement
1.5 years
Role
Chief Product Officer (Interim)
Location
Berlin and London (Hybrid)
“Harpal helped us fill critical gaps in our product org with experienced talent and takes raising the bar on talent very seriously, never setting for anything below excellent. As a result, he left us with a stronger and more resilient product organisation, with a focus on empowered teams continuously delivering and measuring customer-value.”
Claire Novorol
Chief Medical Officer (CMO) & Co-founder
Ada Health
Lendis — Transformed a tech-enabled business into a product business
Lendis offers solutions for employers to onboard and offboard new employees from anywhere in the world. At the peak of their hyper-growth phase, when Lendis struggled to keep up with customer demand, I worked closely with the leadership team to turn the ship around towards a product offering, aka a high-risk, high-reward move. We launched LendisOS, a self-serve portal for employees to create their ideal work setup, and validated and built a new business model that was insanely more valuable than the service business at many levels. We achieved this transformation success with zero customer churn and retained >90% of new customers with LendisOS.
Role: Chief Product Officer (Interim)
Engagement: 10 months
Location: Berlin and London (Hybrid)
“Harpal is an absolute product expert. He is a great asset in shaping product vision and strategy. He asks challenging questions and gives you different perspectives on problems/solutions that push you into the right direction of shaping a product.”
Untold — Transformed an internal cloud tool into a standalone B2B VFX product
Untold built an innovative "Studio in the Cloud" solution on Amazon AWS infrastructure for their in-house artists, which was years ahead of the industry. I worked with AWS and Untold teams to validate the market need and commercialise this innovation into a standalone market-ready product. I led the entire process, managed product teams, delivered PoC to agencies and studios, struck partnerships with gaming companies and Omnicom (the world's largest ad group), and generated revenue by signing up paying customers. The entire process was completed in just two quarters while keeping the burn rate quite low using a “Sell first, Build next” approach.
Role: Chief Product Officer (Interim)
Engagement: 6 months
Location: London (Remote)
Selligent — Re-architected product after an AI startup acquisition
Selligent Marketing Cloud (Acquired by Marigold) brought me on board to lead their product teams and overhaul the product to an AI-centric offering after acquiring an AI startup. I designed product architecture centred around AI, improved product development processes, evolved the product culture at the organisation to be customer-centric, and met aggressive revenue targets set by the CEO and the Board.
Role: VP of Product (Interim)
Engagement: 9 months
Location: Brussels and Hasselt, Belgium (Onsite)
“In a short period, Harpal helped us move forward on several fronts, particularly accelerating the transformation of our culture and processes, and in driving collaboration within and amongst the various product, engineering and customer success teams.”
Epica.ai — Aqua-hired data science team and increased revenue by 10x
I worked with Epica’s leadership team (ex-Google) and prospects to turn a research-led AI prototype into a commercial market-ready product. I raised funding with founders, aqua-hired a strong data science team from Europe, redefined product positioning and struck strategic partnerships with key industry players leading to a mind-blowing 10x increase in ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) within a year.
Role: VP of Product (Interim)
Engagement: 10 months
Location: Miami and New York (Onsite)
Epica.ai →
SharpCloud — Untangled a complex low-code/no-code platform into a treat for users
SharpCloud is an extremely powerful and feature-rich platform to visualise data and its relationships for organisations to make strategic decisions. They have an exceptionally unique and sticky product loved by users, but the users had to go through a steep learning curve and often struggled to define the product. I led the customer discovery research to identify customer segments, identify ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and improve the Value Proposition. I worked with the team, customers, investors and distribution partners to improve the product at its core. The changes in Product Architecture and Product Strategy improved onboarding, feature discovery and product usage and paved the way for product evolution.
Role: Chief Product Officer (Interim)
Engagement: 8 months
Location: London (Hybrid)
“Harpal joined as an interim CPO to help us define our vision for product-led growth (PLG) and was not afraid to challenge our ideas (even as founders). He helped us understand how we needed to reshape as a product team and helped us re-think our product strategy and positioning using his frameworks and strategic workshops, the results of which he presented to our board and investors.”
Investment Bank — Created product vision and strategy for the Chinese market
I worked with the executives of the innovation arm of one of the largest investment banks in China to define product and go-to-market strategies for a mobile banking product for HK and mainland Chinese markets. I facilitated deep-dive workshops, crafted the product vision, defined core KPIs and validated user needs and value proposition via research and high-fidelity prototypes with the help of a local UX agency. I delivered an investment plan based on validated needs and strategy to invest in product development, marketing and related activities, and negotiated multiple supplier contracts essential to the strategy. (I worked on this project via a consultancy firm, and the details are covered under strict NDA. Hence, the hush-hush nature of the case study).
Role: Acting Chief Digital Product Officer
Engagement: 5 months
Location: Hong Kong and Shenzhen (Onsite)
intu — Digital Transformation of a FTSE 100 organisation
intu plc, the UK’s largest shopping centre business, which unfortunately went bust during Covid due to £4.5 billion debt and no footfall, hired me to manage their entire digital product portfolio and teams spanning eCommerce, content, marketplace, mobile apps, data, payments, AI/ML products and everything related to omnichannel commerce. I led the digital transformation of an iconic shopping centre, built several technology products, hired 100+ people, built multiple new revenue streams, launched nationwide campaigns and won multiple retail and eCommerce industry awards. We pioneered an affiliate-driven virtual shopping centre model that’s commonplace.
Role: Director of Product and Design (Interim)
Engagement: 4 years (7 months as interim; rest full-time)
Location: London (Onsite)
“The company wouldn’t have been able to achieve what it did without Harpal’s leadership.”
Debut — refined business model and value proposition
Debut takes the stress out of young students by helping them prepare and find their first job out of university. They sought my help to fix their business model that was impacted after 4 years of a good run because of evolved market conditions like focus on BAME candidates, limited graduate jobs and stretched placement periods (years instead of months). I worked with the leadership team and refined the business model, explored new partnerships, and improved the product, brand awareness and engagement between graduates and employers. This resulted in new revenue, partnerships and users. Debut is consistently featured in app stores as a go-to app for graduate jobs.
Role: Chief Product Officer (Interim)
Engagement: 6 months
Location: London (Onsite)
Debut →
Automata — Achieved Product/Market Fit for robotic automation solutions
Automata made a smart move by applying software product thinking and principles to hardware, where product cycles are usually extremely long. I established the product function at Automata from scratch using the lean product principles, set up processes, built a customer insights hub and nurtured existing talent into product roles. Additionally, I helped Automata achieve Product/Market Fit, relaunched pricing, signed up strategic partners and validated the business model.
Role: VP of Product (Interim)
Engagement: 8 months
Location: London (Onsite)
RiskHub — Replatforming RiskHub’s compliance data management system
RiskHub is UK’s leading compliance platform for large property portfolio companies (1000+ properties). They achieved great success, but the existing tech platform wasn’t fit for purpose. I worked with the RiskHub team on the re-platforming strategy to build the product on a new tech stack and go-to-market plan, without losing any existing customers and improving the product simultaneously. I worked with the product teams to streamline the delivery process and migrate existing customers to the new platform.
Role: Chief Product Officer (Interim)
Engagement: 4 months
Location: London (Hybrid)
Riskhub →
“Harpal understands the blend of technology and human interaction at a level few do.”
“Harpal brings a strong awareness of the customer needs when managing technical delivery, and makes sure that implementation speed does not result in unexpected compromises. He manages and communicates with stakeholders well, and is very easy to work with.”
— Susan Aubrey-Cound, Commercial Director, Syte.ai
Case Studies — Fractional Chief Product Officer (CPO)
The fractional CPO is an advisory model where I work part-time as a C-Suite executive with an organisation and advise on strategy, product, business model, user experience, hiring, partnerships and funding.
These roles don’t involve people management or responsibility for day-to-day operations. My commitment varies from a few hours to a few days a week and can be dialled up and down anytime based on demand, creating a win-win scenario. The following case studies highlight my contributions as a fractional CPO.
Featured fCPO Case Study
ScienceMagic — Launched a venture studio and advised brands on strategy, user experience and technology
ScienceMagic, a certified B-Corporation, is a creative and strategic company that connects brands and talent to their communities to create enduring value. I worked with them intensely in the early days for months to set up the business and define their offering, and later advised their clients on strategy, design, experience and technology on an as-needed basis.
ScienceMagic Value Proposition — I worked with the co-founders and leadership team to set up SMI foundations around purpose, vision, mission and sustainability, and designed a unique approach, process and unparalleled offering in the market for brands and talent. The approach and implementation centred around Science, i.e. data and insights to formulate strategy and discover opportunities; Magic, i.e. creativity, storytelling and community to build desire; and Experience, i.e. product, technology and design to create value for consumers.
Talent Ventures — Talent Ventures offers the unique Science-Magic-Experience approach to world-class exceptional entrepreneurial talent to build purpose-driven businesses. I worked with the Talent Ventures leadership team on the strategy and implementation of the S-M-E approach to their high-profile clients, with the likes of celebrities and athletes.
ScienceMagic.Studios (SMS) Launch — The success of SMI in bringing brands and talent closer to their communities fueled the idea and opportunity for a venture studio to co-invest and support brands and talent further to grow their own economies in the Web3 space. I worked with the team, advisors and partners to design the business model, a delivery process for clients and the team structure to make this a reality. The beta launch resonated well with brands and creators from the music and art space out of LA.
ScienceMagic Clients — As the CxO, I advised myriad ScienceMagic.Inc clients on all aspects of the Experience pillar in S-M-E, including but not limited to user experience, design, product, technology, community engagement, customer acquisition and partnerships. Some of these clients include Brand Architekts, Rally.io, The Crown Estate, Brompton, Jenny Craig and The Luminaire.
Results
ScienceMagic.Inc has grown from pillar to post with some of the well-renowned global brands, like Dolce&Gabbana, Versace and Depop, as their clientele. SMI clients find immense value in their proposition and S-M-E approach, which only a handful of companies are able to offer globally.
Engagement
1.2 years
Role
Chief Experience Officer
Location
London (Hybrid)
Group of Humans — Fractional leadership with explorers, storytellers and makers as a tribe
Group of Humans is a diverse collective of experienced people, with >90% having 20+ years of experience, from various disciplines that usually have no overlap in the corporate world. Imagine having an astronaut, a policy maker, a designer, a sleep specialist and a futurist on one team. I worked with them as a Product Human on various client briefs like The Natural History Museum, and contributed to their Covid Futures proposition, strategy and delivery to the healthcare market during the pandemic.
Role: Product Human (CPO)
Engagement: 1.6 years (Part-time)
Location: London (Remote)
Poder.ai — Data Marketplace in partnership with IOTA foundation
Poder is a predictive analytics AI platform, and IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger designed for the Internet of things (IoT). I led the product vision, strategy, design and development of the data marketplace for Poder and IOTA that allowed B2B companies to share raw data anonymously to the IOTA marketplace and enrich it for personalisation. The product team built a Proof of Concept (PoC) that gathered data from plugins, firmware, SDKs and used FOG Computing on IoT devices to complete the customer journey.
Role: Chief Product Officer
Engagement: 10 months (Part-time)
Location: New York (Remote)
Iota.org →
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I love solving complex problems. Insane challenges and ambitious goals motivate me like nothing else.