The hardest part of hiring a head of product is that you already are one

If you are looking for a fractional head of product, I can make a reasonable guess at your situation.

You built the product. Possibly you specified it and someone else built it. Possibly you vibe-coded it yourself over a long few months. Either way you are the product person, because there wasn't anyone else, and the thing exists because you refused to let it not exist.

And now you need to be somewhere else.

You need to be doing founder sales, which nobody can do for you at this stage, because you are the only person who can describe the thing with any conviction. You need to be in front of investors, or in front of customers, or both in the same week. And every hour you spend triaging feedback and reordering a backlog is an hour you are not spending on the thing only you can do.

That is usually what the search is really about. Not a skills gap. A time gap.

You saw a gap in a market you came out of. Financial services, sport, property asset management, recruitment, wherever. You worked inside it long enough to see precisely where it was broken, and you understood the problem better than anyone building software for it.

That understanding is the whole asset. It is also the thing that makes the next bit difficult.

Because bringing someone in — fractional or full-time — means handing over the part you have been holding closest.

They will kill your darlings. Not maliciously. That is the job. Somebody has to make the difficult no decisions you have been making, and they will make some of them differently.

They will tell you things take longer than you know they take. You will be right about how long it took you. They will be right about how long it takes when there is more than one person involved and it has to be maintained afterwards. This is an annoying conversation and you will have it more than once.

They will want to talk to your customers. All of them. Including the ones who churned, which is the conversation nobody enjoys and the only one that reliably tells you anything.

If none of that sounds bearable yet, you are not ready. That is a legitimate answer and it is cheaper to arrive at now.

Six questions before you hire anyone

Answer these honestly rather than aspirationally.

Do you actually need a product person, or do you need another pair of hands? These get confused constantly. A product person will reduce the amount you build. If what you want is more output, hire a developer.

Are you willing to let go of the reins? Not in principle. On a Tuesday, when they say no to something you want.

Have you got product-market fit, or evidence pointing at it? Someone paying you is the strongest version of this. It doesn't have to be many people.

Have you made sales? If yes, a fractional hire has something real to work with. If no, you may need help finding out whether anyone wants it — which is a different job, and worth naming as such.

Can you still manage the workload? Finding new customers, nurturing the ones you have, and shipping something stable. If two of those three are slipping, the case makes itself.

What are you going to do with the time? If there isn't a specific answer, the time will fill itself with product work again and you will have paid someone to sit next to you.

If you find yourself saying yes to most of those, it is probably worth a conversation. I am happy to have that conversation and tell you it isn't yet, if it isn't yet.