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Forward-deployed product

A product executive who still builds.

I embed with your teams and your customers, find the next revenue line, and build the proof that they will pay for it.

How an engagement runsWhy now
Formerly
Chief Product Officer, Sitecore
Shipped
Four products, four different betsContent Hub · CMP · XM Cloud · SitecoreAI
Validated
Leader, Gartner and ForresterDXP · content marketing
Why now

Building is getting cheap. Judgment is not.

The bottleneck moved

Engineering capacity stops being the constraint. Judgment takes its place.

Iterating is necessary but not enough

The product team is rightly consumed by live customers with real demands. Necessary work, but not where the next line comes from.

The value is in your customers

The next fundable problem is an acute, unsolved need inside an existing account. Proximity finds it; taste and product sense pick the right one.

Unclaimed does not stay unclaimed

Cheap building cuts both ways. A rival, a point vendor, or the customer’s own team will solve it, and whoever solves it owns the relationship that follows.

Why me

Four products. Four different bets.

Not four releases of the same thing. Each was found with customers before it was a roadmap item, and one of them is probably your situation.

01
Point solution, then platform

Stylelabs Content Hub

DAM first, then the platform

Content Hub was a broad enterprise platform, and breadth asks a customer to believe in all of it at once. The first SaaS version led with one piece of it — digital asset management — sold on its own merits rather than as a sample of something larger. I led the on-site customer teams through those first setups: three days to stand a customer up, where an enterprise implementation typically ran to months.

ProvedThe wedge is a real product, not a trimmed one — and it only works if it lands in days rather than quarters. Prove DAM, and the rest of the platform becomes an expansion the customer has already been given a reason to want.

Yours ifyour platform is broad and the sale is slow, and one capability inside it could stand on its own — landing fast enough to earn the rest.

02
Adjacent to the core

Sitecore CMP

Sitecore’s first Content Marketing Platform

The core business ended where content was delivered. Planning, briefing, production, approval, the asset library — all upstream, all in tools Sitecore did not sell, for a buyer it had no product for. CMP closed that gap, built at Sitecore against a commitment made at the acquisition rather than a roadmap slot it happened to win.

ProvedA new line can be built adjacent to the core without waiting for the core to ask — new buyer, new budget, same accounts — and delivered to a date agreed before the work started.

Yours ifyour core is growing single digits and the next line has to come from a new buyer inside accounts you already own.

03
SaaS innovation of the core

Sitecore XM Cloud

The heritage platform, re-founded as SaaS

The hardest of the four: the product being rebuilt was the one paying the bills. Not the old stack hosted for you but a composable, headless SaaS product — new editor, new delivery model, new commercial model — with a route across for an installed base that had years sunk into the old one.

ProvedThe core can be re-founded rather than extended — and the installed base comes with you if migration is treated as part of the product.

Yours ifyour revenue sits on a delivery model the market is leaving, and the installed base is what makes moving frightening.

04
AI-native build

SitecoreAI

One platform, agents at the centre

Not AI bolted onto the existing products. One platform drawn from many acquisitions, built so agents are how the work gets done rather than a panel off to the side, shipped with Agentic Studio and proven with customers first — the AI Innovation Lab with Microsoft, and the design-partner programme.

ProvedAn AI-native product is a different build, not a feature release — and customers will co-design it long before it is generally available.

Yours ifyou have shipped AI features that changed nothing, or several acquired products that need to become one.

Gartner · DXP
Visionary in 2022 to Leader, farthest on vision by 2026
Gartner · CMP
Magic Quadrant Leader in the content marketing category
Forrester · DXP
Strong Performer to first-ever Leader, Q4 2025

The pattern is the point. A wedge, an adjacency, a re-founding, an AI-native build — one method underneath. Get close to the customers, find the acute unsolved need, build the proof with them, and put a price on it. That is the loop below, run on one idea and inside a quarter.

Still building

I built the product I use.

A suite of AI reviewers that inspects a product across every dimension, files every finding in one shared language, and knows the difference between a number that moved and a product that changed. It is running right now, against real products.

reviewers built and running
products reviewed end to end

Every finding carries how it was known — seen in the running app, measured on the page, or only inferred from source.

See the product →
Engagement

Show up with something real. Then prove they will pay.

The internal pass is scaffolding. Its only job is to make the first customer conversation concrete.

Month one

Find the wedge

From raw material to a customer who has redrawn the idea in their own terms.

  1. Gather the raw material. A fast pass with the teams and the CRO. Use cases in flight, ideas never prioritised, white space in accounts.
  2. Shape preliminary use cases. Enough substance to open with something concrete, not a discovery questionnaire.
  3. Put it in front of them. Your account team in the room. Mock it up so the customer has something real to react to.
  4. Let them redraw it. Open it up to their pain points and priorities. That is where the real use cases come from.
By week fourA yes to exploring a specific shape of the idea, and a stronger customer relationship either way.
Months two and three

Prove they will pay

Enthusiasm is not demand. The test is a price, a budget line, and a revenue line worth funding.

  1. Build the proof. Co-designed with the customer, in their environment, against their data.
  2. Test willingness to pay. Put a price on it. Interest is cheap. A budget line and a number are not.
  3. Write the commercial thesis. Who pays, what it displaces, what the margin looks like at scale.
  4. Turn it into an option. A de-risked revenue line the board can value, not another roadmap item.
By month threeA priced offer, a customer willing to buy it, and a revenue line that moves the valuation.
The proposal

Two ways to start. Both end clean.

Senior-led. Fixed fee, fixed term. No retainer, no scope creep, no standing invoice. You get a number on the first call, against the scope we agree — the same test this engagement runs on your customers.

Option one
One month
Fixed fee, one payment

The wedge, or a clean no

Gather the raw material, ground it in a real customer conversation, and hand back what is actually there.

If the wedge is not there, we stop. No notice period, no awkward breakup.

Option two
Three months
Fixed fee, staged at the extension

The wedge, proved and priced

Everything in the month, then build the proof with a design-partner customer, price it, and test whether they will pay.

You end with a priced offer and a decision package your team can estimate against.

Optional — transition. A short, tapering handoff beside the named PM and engineers who will own it. Scoped only if you want it.

The next revenue line is already inside an account.

Start with the month. If the wedge is not there, we stop and you have lost four weeks, not a quarter.

roger@whatmatters.buildSee the product