Build the right product before you build the wrong one.

The problem it solves.

You can build. That was never the constraint. The constraint is that every week produces four or five product decisions with no obvious right answer, and you are making all of them on your own, at speed, using the same brain that is writing the code. It works until it does not, and the way you find out is expensive.

Most builder founders arrive with some version of this list:

• The roadmap keeps changing. Not because you are indecisive, but because nothing is deciding it except the last conversation you had.
• Every feature feels important. Which is another way of saying nothing is being cut, and everything is arriving later than it should.
• Customer feedback is contradictory. Two users want opposite things and both are certain. Nobody has told you that is normal, or what to do about it.
• The product works, but the value proposition is not clear. You can demo it. You cannot say in one sentence who it is for and what it replaces.
• Engineering effort is going into things customers may not need. Your effort. The only genuinely scarce thing you have.
• You want a second opinion from somebody who has shipped and scaled products, rather than from a founder forum or a model that agrees with you.

This is not mentoring. Mentoring is about you and how you work. A founder session is about the product: the thing you are building, the evidence you have, and the decision in front of you this week.

Who it is for.

• Technical founders building their first product.
• Solo builders with too many possible directions and no way to choose between them.
• Early-stage teams deciding what genuinely belongs in the MVP.
• Founders who have built something and are not sure what to do next.
• Teams that need product and go-to-market thinking without hiring a full-time CPO.

What you get.

• A clearer product direction. Not a strategy document. A direction you can hold in your head and use to say no.
• Sharper MVP scope and priorities. What is in, what is out, and what the out list is waiting on.
• Practical feedback on the product as it stands. Looked at properly, by somebody who does this for a living, and told to you straight.
• Customer problems turned into workflows. The step that most builder founders skip, and the reason a technically good product can still be unusable.
• Better decisions about what to build next. With the reasoning visible, so you can make the next one without me.
• Honest challenge. When an idea is overcomplicated, premature, or solving a problem you have not evidenced, you will be told so in the hour rather than in six weeks by the market.
• Light follow-through. A short written set of decisions and next steps, so the hour turns into action rather than a good conversation you half remember.

How it works.

• Bring the problem. The product, the decision, the contradictory feedback, the roadmap you keep rewriting. No preparation pack, no homework, no discovery phase.
• We work it through. The evidence you actually have, the options genuinely open, and the trade-offs under each one. Most of the hour is spent here.
• You leave with decisions. A short, practical set of them, plus the next steps, written down.

One session is a complete thing and plenty of founders only ever book one. If the decisions are weekly rather than occasional, the monthly arrangement is cheaper and works better, because the context carries over and you stop spending the first ten minutes explaining where things got to.

What it costs.

• Single session, £150 an hour. Book and pay for one here, use it, then decide whether you want another. Nothing recurring.
• Ongoing support, £750 to £1,000 a month. Four sessions, plus light asynchronous support between them for the decisions that will not wait a week. The range depends on how much of that between-sessions support you expect to use, and it is agreed up front rather than billed after.

This is deliberately the cheapest way into Product Pieces. Everything else here is fixed-scope work delivered by a team, from £3,500 to £18,000, and senior product ownership starts at £2,000 a month. Those exist because most companies buying product help need somebody to own the work. You do not. You need judgement, at the moment you are making the call, and that is worth an hour rather than an engagement.

Early-stage places. A small number of places are held at £100 an hour for founders who are pre-revenue and paying for this out of their own pocket. Four are open at the moment, and you can book one here. When they are taken they are taken, and the rate goes back to £150 until one comes free. It is the same hour, not a lesser version of it.

Who runs it.

Alex Feltwell. Product leader, exited founder, and author of four books on product strategy. Grew Atomise from nothing to £1.3m turnover and 37 staff before exiting, and has worked across fintech, marketplaces, AI and field-service products. Now runs Product Pieces. Every session is with me, not with an associate, which is the reason the diary is finite.

Right fit, and not.

This works when you are close enough to the product to act on a decision the same week you make it. That is usually a founder who is writing the code, drawing the screens, or sitting next to the one person who is.

Not this, and it is cheaper to say so now:

• You are not technical and an outside team is building it. Start with the Build Assurance Review: two weeks, fixed fee, an independent verdict on whether the build is on track.
• You need somebody to own product, not advise on it. That is the Fractional CPO, one or two days a week, from £2,000 a month, with the numbers published.
• You want the MVP scoped properly, as a deliverable. That is The MVP, a fixed-scope piece with a build plan and success metrics at the end of it.
• You want to develop a product person on your team. That is The Coaching Programme, which is coaching properly, with goals and a review.

Before you book anything, the Diagnostic is free and takes two minutes, and if you have a build quote or a statement of work in front of you, The Scope will read it for unclosed decisions at no cost.