The challenge
The product team had 47 items on the active roadmap and was shipping one or two per quarter. Engineering estimates were unreliable, content operations were manual, and the CEO was spending 30+ hours a month on marketing tasks that should have been systemized. The founder knew the problem; what they needed was outside perspective and execution muscle to fix it without disrupting the team further.
Our approach
- 01
Audited the active roadmap against user impact and revenue contribution; killed or deferred 31 items that weren't moving core metrics
- 02
Integrated Claude into the content operations pipeline — lesson plan drafting, quality review, metadata tagging, curriculum alignment
- 03
Stood up a weekly shipping rhythm with sized work items, daily standups, and honest retros
- 04
Stepped in as fractional CMO for two quarters to systemize acquisition, coach the marketing lead, and free up the CEO
- 05
Built dashboards that tied marketing spend to activation and retention, not just signups
Results
Shipping velocity tripled within one quarter — from 1-2 features/quarter to 6 features/quarter
Content operations time cut by 60% with educator review still in the loop
CEO recovered ~25 hours/month of focused product time
Platform NPS improved from 34 to 52 over the engagement
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) declined 18% as the acquisition motion became systematic
Timeline
Engagement: 6 months with 2-quarter fractional CMO overlap.
What we learned
- Killing items is harder and more valuable than adding them — 31 deferrals unlocked the 16 that actually mattered
- AI content ops worked because the educators were in the review loop from day one, not bolted on after
- The CEO's 25 hours/month recovered was the most valuable output we produced, but it was invisible on any dashboard
“Adam's team took our tangled product roadmap and shipped AI workflows into the core platform. It is genuinely rare to work with an agency that ships.”
— VP of Product, Education Technology