Primary value
Executive product leadership with commercial discipline and AI product judgement.
Hiring decision board
If you need a senior product operator who turns bespoke work into repeatable capability, book Joe.
Target roles: Head of Product, VP Product, CPO, Head of AI Product. Interim and fractional available until the permanent mandate lands.
Pattern repeated
The same move, four times: convert one-off funded delivery into reusable product capability.
Ask
Use this page to decide whether to take the conversation now.
01 · mandate fit matrix
Map common hiring risks to evidence before you take the interview.
Hiring concern
The Leader (blue)
The Expert (teal)
The Builder (purple)
Can he lead beyond feature delivery?Executive decision-making, org shape, commercials
YesAgency MD six-year P&L, ten-discipline org
YesFixed-scope productized advisory structure
YesFounder/CEO under venture governance
Can he work credibly with AI claims?Receipts over hype
YesUsage-based NLP architecture deal at Clickatell
YesDated foresight receipts with explicit limits
YesNine agentic systems shipped independently
Can he manage constrained resources?Spend discipline under pressure
YesAgency run rate + 62-client portfolio over 6 years
YesNo retainer consulting; deliverables first
Yes£70,066 through month 8 at Camvas
02 · operating spine
One operating pattern, repeated at four scales.
Each chapter is a version of the same move: use funded delivery to create reusable product capability.
2007–2013
Agency MD · FormFunction Digital
6-year P&L
up to 30 contractors
10 disciplines
- 62 clients served across media, telecoms and services.
- 3 national awards (Bookmarks).
2021–2022
Founder & CEO · Camvas
Founders Factory + GMG
8 people / 4 countries
8-person advisory board
- 5,000+ signups.
- £70,066 spend to month 8.
2022–2023
Director · Interact Chat Products & AI, Clickatell
AI-enabled chat commerce
enterprise banking use-case
- Commissioned NLP supplier architecture behind Absa Chat Banking.
- Negotiated no-CapEx, usage-based commercial structure.
2024–now
Independent builder
9 agentic systems shipped
written architecture decisions
- Selected pgvector entity resolution after a written decision against Neo4j/GraphRAG.
03 · receipts ledger
Claims with limits shown upfront.
142M+
Automated FAQ interactions, Absa Chat Banking.
Limit: I commissioned and negotiated the NLP supplier architecture and set the usage-based commercial structure. I did not build the model, and I had left before this was measured.
confidence: medium-high
Award
Excellence in Innovation — Banking Product (Global Banking & Finance Awards 2022). Absa also named Best Digital Bank South Africa.
Limit: publicly verifiable third-party validation — which is exactly why it leads; it removes the need to defend an internal metric.
confidence: high
224%
YoY growth on Clickatell's AI-enabled Chat Commerce platform.
Limit: I piloted the AI capability the growth is attributed to. I did not deliver the growth and I wasn't there when it was measured. Downstream evidence, not a claim.
confidence: high (number), careful framing
Feb 2022
Camvas deck roadmapped intelligent summarisation, semantic search and automated transcription before LLM commoditisation.
Limit: proves foresight and thesis selection, not implementation. The deck is dated — judge the dates.
confidence: high
3×
Bookmarks awards for Sarie.com and YourParenting.co.za (2011, 2012) on Media24 titles.
Limit: agency work, delivered by a team Joe led and hired. What's his is that the studio produced them three times.
confidence: high
£70,066
Camvas spend through 8 months.
Limit: most pre-seed founders burn £200–500k by month 8; this was structured, invoiced and allocated across two entities under Founders Factory governance.
04 · recognisable environments
Brands and institutions where this work was done.
Barclays Global Investors
Bupa
Cancer Research UK
Skrill · Paysafe
Powa
4finance
Simply Business
TransferGo
hiber
Founders Factory
Guardian Media Group
Clickatell
Absa
Client testimonial
"FormFunction's quick and professional service, the can-do mentality, and the collaborative nature of our relationship have been the key to the success of sarie.com, the second largest women's website in SA."— Maryke Cumpsty, Digital Editor, Sarie.com, Media24.
3× Bookmarks awards
Sarie.com + YourParenting.co.za · 2011/2012
Sarie.com + YourParenting.co.za · 2011/2012
Global Banking & Finance Awards 2022
Excellence in Innovation — Banking Product
Excellence in Innovation — Banking Product
Absa: Best Digital Bank South Africa
Third-party signal attached to the same period
Third-party signal attached to the same period
05 · convening power
He builds communities that outlast him.
Marty Cagan opened ProductTank Cape Town in 2014; he returned in 2020 for Remote Product #14, the week EMPOWERED shipped.
ProductTank Cape Town
Founded Aug 2014. First ProductTank in Africa. Sponsored by Google and sli.do. Still running without him.
1,966 members
4.7★ from 91 ratings
22 events
Remote Product
17 events (Apr 2020 → Sep 2021), free, remote, built solo from a standing start in lockdown, scheduled across four timezones.
17 events
4 timezones
Cagan returned for #14
06 · engagement menu
Start with hire. Use the others only if needed.
Hire (primary)
- Team and operating model design.
- AI product portfolio prioritisation and governance.
- Commercial architecture for platform bets.
Consult
- Product strategy reset.
- AI product opportunity framing.
- Leadership and decision process diagnostics.
Collaborate
- Zero-to-one proposition and validation.
- Capability packaging for repeatability.
- Commercial model design and launch support.
Most people arrive at Hire and never need the rest. That is a good outcome.
07 · not a fit
Reasons not to hire Joe (and what to do instead).
You need a pure IC PM right now.
If the role is mostly backlog throughput under existing leadership, this is over-scoped.
Do this instead: hire a strong senior IC PM and keep this mandate for a leadership inflection point.
You want AI theatre, not evidence.
If the brief is marketing-led AI claims without commercial or delivery grounding, expectations will clash.
Do this instead: run a short experimentation sprint with a prototyping studio, then revisit leadership hiring.
You need deep model research ownership.
Joe leads product architecture and commercial structure; he does not position himself as the model builder.
Do this instead: hire an applied ML lead first, then pair with product leadership once the stack is stable.