Ad-supported calculator network, ~14M MAU
Rebuilt the product department from scratch. Discovery cycles dropped from 7 months to 6 weeks.
- Period:
- 2024–2025
- Role:
- Head of Product (B2B contract via RootCause Consultancy)
- Stage:
- ~14M MAU, ad-revenue model (display/CPM), transitioning to subscription
The situation
A high-traffic calculator network with ~14M monthly active users, monetising through display advertising (CPM model). Each calculator is a standalone SEO-optimised page — effectively a content-at-scale ad business, not a traditional SaaS product. The company was exploring a shift toward subscription revenue as ad yield pressure increased.
The product org had outgrown its operating model: discovery cycles were stretching past 7 months, A/B testing was ad-hoc, and analytics was unreliable enough that decisions were quietly being made on instinct. There was no shared definition of what a “good product decision” looked like.
The brief was sharp: rebuild the product department end-to-end with the operating systems a company at this scale should already have. No advisory hours — working systems, installed and running, with the team trained on them.
What I did
Installed the metrics tree first — the User Value formula — and made it the basis for OKRs and prioritization. Behind it, a tracking plan and a Data Creation Process flow that PMs and product data analysts now use to spec every initiative. With the data spine in place, the rest could land: a phased Discovery Framework, a PRD template with hypothesis and tracking baked in, and an A/B testing framework with the first three tests set up and running.
In parallel, ran the org rebuild. Calibrated PM, designer, and PDA roles across three seniority levels. Reframed hiring scorecards around the artifacts the role owns. Trained the existing team on the new operating cadence so the framework didn’t depend on me being there.
What changed
- Discovery cycles cut from 7 months to 1.5
- Programmatic A/B testing produced 3–17% MoM RPS and session-length lift
- Ad-to-subscription transition plan modelled with 3x revenue projection
- Product hiring time reduced by 50% via role clarity