The Field Guide for Product Leaders in the Startup Trenches

Built From the Experiences Product Leaders Were Too NDA'd to Share, Until Now.

<3yr
Average CPO tenure
40%
Fail within 18 months
20+
Leaders interviewed for this book

The Product Leader's Start-Up Handbook was built on a simple premise: the challenges that senior product leaders face when joining startups and scale-ups are not random, they are deeply patterned, remarkably consistent, and sometimes preventable.

NDAs. Non-disparagement agreements. Reputational risk. The quiet shame of walking away from a role that was supposed to be your big break.

These are the forces that have kept this conversation underground, until now. Through in-depth interviews with more than twenty VPs, Directors, and Heads of Product, this book surfaces the patterns that define what is, for many product leaders, an all-out battleground.

By Rosemary King
The Product Leader's
Start-Up Handbook
Drawing on interviews with 20+ senior product leaders to expose the patterns that make startups a battleground — and give you the tools to succeed in them.
Follow the research →

What emerged was clear: the dysfunction that derails senior product hires has little to do with individual competence, and everything to do with the structural friction between founder-led organizations and the discipline of product management.

Grounded in real experience and rigorous research, The Product Leader's Start-Up Handbook gives product leaders the tools they need to evaluate opportunities before they say yes, navigate dysfunction once they're in, and set themselves up to actually succeed.

The conversation is long overdue. Subscribe on the Product Leader’s Start-up Handbook Substack above.