Joe da Silva · ProductAnywhere

Get Joe hired into a senior product role

Head of Product / VP Product / CPO / Head of AI Product
Interim and fractional work until that lands.

Book a conversation

Four scales of bespoke work → reusable capability

2007–2013
Agency MD, FormFunction Digital
Six-year P&L, 30 contractors, 10 disciplines, 62 clients, 3 national awards

Built a studio that produced three Bookmarks awards (SA digital industry awards) for Media24 titles: Sarie.com (2011) and YourParenting.co.za (2012).

Awards
3×
Agency work, delivered by a team Joe led and hired.
2021–2022
Founder & CEO, Camvas
Founders Factory + Guardian Media Group. 8 people, 4 countries, £70,066 spend by month 8.

Roadmapped intelligent summarisation, semantic search and automated transcription in Feb 2022 — before the LLM ecosystem commoditised all three.

Foresight
Feb 2022
Proves thesis selection, not implementation. The deck is dated.
Spend
£70,066
Structured, invoiced, allocated across two entities under Founders Factory governance.
2022–2023
Director, Interact Chat Products & AI, Clickatell
Commissioned NLP architecture behind Absa Chat Banking on a no-CapEx usage-based structure.

Absa won Excellence in Innovation — Banking Product (Global Banking & Finance Awards 2022) and Best Digital Bank South Africa.

Award
2022
Publicly verifiable third-party validation.

Automated FAQ interactions on Absa Chat Banking: 142M+.

Interactions
142M+
Commissioned and negotiated the NLP supplier architecture. Left before measurement.
Medium-high

YoY growth on Clickatell's AI-enabled Chat Commerce platform: 224%.

Growth
224%
Piloted the AI capability. Downstream evidence, not a claim.
High
2024–now
Independent builder
Nine shipped agentic systems. pgvector entity resolution after a written decision against Neo4j/GraphRAG.

Building at the intersection of product leadership and AI systems.

Selected employers

Barclays Global Investors Bupa Cancer Research UK Skrill · Paysafe Powa 4finance Simply Business TransferGo hiber Founders Factory Guardian Media Group Clickatell Absa

FormFunction archive (2007–2013)

63 client logos from the studio years. Greyscale, colour on hover.

The convening argument

Founded ProductTank Cape Town in August 2014 — first in Africa, opened by Marty Cagan, sponsored by Google and sli.do. Today: 1,966 members, 4.7★ from 91 ratings, 22 events — still running, without him.

Founded Remote Product: 17 events, April 2020 → September 2021, free, remote, built solo from lockdown, scheduled across four timezones. Cagan returned for event #14 the week EMPOWERED shipped.

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

Engage

Most people arrive at Hire and never need the rest. That is a good outcome.

Hire

Executive mandate, 1 day/wk → full time. Fractional, interim, permanent.

Book a conversation

Consult

Fixed scope, named deliverables. 2–6 weeks, no retainers.

Scope it

Collaborate

Venture build. 3–12 months, shared risk.

Propose a build

Not a fit

Three reasons NOT to hire Joe, each with a "do this instead".

You need a junior

Joe is overqualified for execution roles. He will mentor, but he will not be content with delivery.

Hire a rising product manager instead

You want a retainer

Joe works on fixed scopes with clear deliverables. He does not do open-ended retainers.

Find a fractional CPO who offers retainers

You need a full-time CTO

Joe is a product leader, not an engineer. He will not build your tech stack.

Hire a CTO instead