Product strategy, roadmap and pricing owned by a senior operator one to three days a week. The same leader who has run go-to-market, so the roadmap and the revenue plan finally agree.
A fractional CPO owns product. The strategy, the roadmap, the discovery process, the pricing, the team, and the commercial outcome the product is supposed to produce.
Week to week that means:
Fractional product leadership is a thinner market than fractional marketing, particularly in New Zealand and Australia. Very few practitioners offer it, and almost none offer it alongside fractional CMO capability.
The fractional CPO guide for New Zealand covers when to bring one in, what it costs and how to choose the right person.
Everything is a priority, so nothing is.
Velocity is fine. Direction is the problem.
Usually a positioning or pricing problem wearing a product costume.
Nobody senior to make the hard call or say no.
The data exists. The discovery loop does not.
The permanent hire is six months away and the roadmap cannot wait.
| Option | What you get | Owns the outcome | Indicative cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional CPO | A product executive one to three days a week, in leadership meetings, making the calls | Yes | ~NZD 120k / year equivalent |
| Full-time CPO | Permanent, five days, plus equity and recruitment | Yes | NZD 220k+ package, 3–6 month ramp |
| Head of Product | Runs the roadmap you already have, well | Partly | NZD 160k+ package |
| Product consultant | A process review and a recommendation | No | Project fee |
| Product contractor | Delivery against a defined brief | No | Day rate |
Every engagement follows the same four stages: Engage, Enhance, Execute, Embed. You know what happens next, and so do we.
An initial meeting, half or full day immersion in your business, where we establish your needs and work out whether we are a good fit.
Planning the plan. Identifying the specific needs and actions that will enhance the performance of your organisation.
Getting the job done. Working with your teams to drive execution of the strategy, tracking performance and measuring results.
Not a spray and walk away model. Embedding processes, governance and ways of working that hold after we step back.
Engage is where we work out whether this is a fit and what the plan looks like. It is a half or full day, at no charge, and you keep what comes out of it.
Engage starts with immersion, at no charge. We spend a half or a full day with you, in person where we can, learning as much as possible about the business and where you want to take it.
Leadership, and whoever runs sales, marketing and product. We hear the problem from each side and look at the numbers you already have.
By the end of the day we both know whether this works: whether we are the right people for it, and whether the problem is one we can move.
You get the brief back: the problem in one page, the outcomes you want, and the plan to get there. Whether we go on together or not, you keep it.
A fractional leader is only useful if they are inside the business, with the team, in the tools and the conversations. This is how we work when we are with you.
Monthly engagements sized in days per week, typically one to three days, with a minimum initial term of three months. Days can scale up or down as the business changes. See the pricing page for more details.
"A rare talent. Darren combines a genuine interest for solving real customer problems with an inherent commercial and strategic brain."
Case studies on the results page.
A fractional Chief Product Officer owns the product function part-time, usually one to three days a week. Product strategy, the roadmap, discovery, prioritisation, pricing and packaging, and the product team itself. They sit in leadership meetings and carry the product number the same way a permanent CPO would.
A product consultant reviews your product process and gives you a recommendation. A fractional CPO makes the calls: what ships, what gets cut, how the roadmap is sequenced, who is on the team. Accountability is the difference, and it is the whole difference.
If you need someone to run the existing roadmap well, hire a Head of Product. If the harder question is whether the roadmap is right at all, whether the product is priced correctly, and whether product and go-to-market are pointed the same way, that is CPO work and you may not need it five days a week.
Indicative ranges are NZD 6,000 to 22,000 a month depending on days per week, with AUD and USD equivalents for Australian and North American engagements. Published market rates for fractional CPOs internationally run from USD 3,000 to 24,000 a month depending on scope. See the pricing page.
Yes. Most of our engagements involve distributed teams across New Zealand, Australia, Asia and the US. The practical requirement is overlap hours and a working discovery cadence, not co-location.
Because most product failures are not build failures. The product works and the market does not understand it, or the roadmap is solving a problem buyers will not pay to fix. BabylonSixty has run both functions, so those two failure modes get caught at the same table. Read why good products fail.
Product and revenue data review, customer and churn conversations, a read of the roadmap against the commercial plan, then a diagnosis to leadership by week three and an agreed ninety-day plan by week four.
Yes. When the role genuinely needs five days a week, we write the role, screen candidates, sit in on interviews and hand over.
A 30-minute call. No obligation. No pitch. Just a straight conversation about your business and whether we can help.
Schedule a discovery call