Absa
Chat Banking at national-bank scale. NLP architecture commissioned and negotiated; the usage-based commercial structure behind 142M+ automated interactions.
ProductAnywhere — product & growth practice
Scale products.
Build ventures.
Govern the AI.
ProductAnywhere is the practice of Joe da Silva — executive product leadership, productized consulting, and active venture building, run as one ecosystem. Based in Cape Town, operating globally, since 2014.
At a glance
Now- Now
- Selectively exploring executive product leadership roles.CPO / VP Product / Head of Product
- Also
- Fractional and advisory engagements, scoped and time-bound.Fixed scope, named deliverables
- Always
- Building. The ventures are the R&D lab for the leadership.Pet Basics, in market
- Base
- Cape Town — emerging-market depth, global reach.Remote-first, worldwide
Sec. 01The lanes
One practice, three lanes
Not a lack of focus — a deliberate strategy. Each lane strengthens the other two, and the map below shows exactly how.
01
The Leader
Executive Product Leadership
I don’t just manage products; I scale them — org design, roadmap ownership, and the board conversation that goes with it.
→
02
The Expert
Productized Consulting
Senior product and AI expertise without the full-time hire: scoped sprints with named deliverables, never open-ended retainers.
→
03
The Builder
Active Venture Building
Pet Basics is live proof that I understand the How as well as the Why — from group-buy validation to a turnkey, externally backed platform.
→
- →Corporate track record validates consulting authority.
- →Enterprise experience grounds venture strategy.
- →Consulting diversity demonstrates adaptability.
- →Advisory work surfaces new venture opportunities.
- →Ventures prove hands-on credibility to employers.
- →Technical builds demonstrate real implementation capability.
Sec. 02Social proof
Named where public, anonymised where not
Clickatell
CPaaS Chat Commerce. The AI capability behind the platform’s publicly reported growth was piloted here — the growth itself is downstream evidence, not a claim.
Camvas
AI product strategy, February 2022 — intelligent summarisation, semantic search and automated transcription, before the ecosystem commoditised all three. The deck is dated; judge the dates.
Several engagements sit under NDA and stay there. Attributed references are available on request, and client logos appear here only with written permission — which is exactly how your name would be treated.
Sec. 03The receipts
Every number here tells you what it isn’t
The strongest figures I have. Each carries the limit of my own claim to it, because you were going to ask anyway — and because a number without its attribution is just a number.
142M+
Automated FAQ interactions served by Absa Chat Banking.
What I did not do
I commissioned and negotiated the NLP architecture and set the usage-based commercial structure. I did not build the model, and I had left before this was measured.
proof/absa-142m-faq-deflection · confidence: medium-high
Feb 2022
A Camvas deck roadmapping intelligent summarisation, semantic search and automated transcription — before the ecosystem commoditised all three.
How to read it
Don’t take my word for the foresight. The deck is dated and I’ll send it. Judge the dates.
proof/camvas-pre-llm-ai-foresight · confidence: high
224%
Year-on-year growth reported on Clickatell’s AI-enabled Chat Commerce platform.
Not my result
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.
proof/clickatell-224pct-yoy-growth · public press release
C+
The architecture grade I gave my own AI coding assistant, in writing, in its own repository.
Why it’s here
A portfolio of nine builds with nine glowing self-assessments would tell you nothing. This one tells you how I audit.
projects/superdev · self-audit, published
0→1
Pet Basics — specialised husbandry e-commerce, built from group-buy validation to a turnkey platform with external investment.
What I have not done
Scaled it. It is in market and it is mine; the growth numbers, when they are worth publishing, will be.
proof/pet-basics-zero-to-one · confidence: medium-high
The full ledger, with baselines and proof artefacts, lives at /receipts.
Sec. 04Engage
One subject. Three ways in.
Ordered by depth of commitment, lightest first. Every engagement has a fixed scope and a fixed duration before it has a price.
01 · Consult
Scoped engagement
30-day growth pilots · governed AI implementation · GTM strategy
You have shipped AI and it hasn’t landed, or the funnel isn’t what the board deck says it is. Productized scope with named deliverables — not an open-ended retainer.
02 · Collaborate
Build together
Venture studios · accelerators · founders
Venture architecture, product advisory, or a hard problem worth a whiteboard session. Custom agentic builds, multi-tenant platforms, zero-to-one. Founder-operator, shared risk.
03 · Hire
Executive mandate
Head of Product · VP Product · CPO · Chief Product & AI Officer
Fractional, interim, or permanent. The deepest way to work with me. Governance-heavy and regulated environments welcome — that is home ground.
Most people arrive at 01 and never need the rest. That is a good outcome.
Sec. 05The concept lab
Seven concepts, mined — none copied
This site was designed in the open. Seven models were given overlapping briefs; what each contributed is documented, and the facet on each card shows its lane and its lineage — v1 signal to v3 receipt.
The skeleton
The at-a-glance colophon, the numbered lane rows, the editorial section headers, the filterable lab itself. The strongest structure of the seven.
The status copy
Now / Also / Always / Base — better words than the colophon it fed. Merged: kimi’s placement, glm’s writing.
The limit line
The operating-range strip, the receipt’s Limit field, the reinforcement map, the masthead availability chip. The most cluttered of the seven; mined, not shipped.
The receipts model
Number, claim, stated limit, proof slug, confidence — the strongest single idea in the set. Plus the assessment bar and the Not-a-fit section.
The CTA pair
Engage → plus See the Receipts, and the three-line headline with one emphasised line. The front door this site opens with.
The atmosphere
Light ground, generous whitespace, calm rhythm. The proof that the brand surface is light — the calm this system is built on.
The stage framing
Signal → Pilot → Receipt — the seed of the stage ladder the maturity steps now render.
Sec. 06Not a fit
Three times you should not engage me
-
01
You need AI added to a product that isn’t working yet.
AI will make a bad product fail faster and more expensively. Instead: fix activation first — a good PM costs less than I do.
-
02
Your leadership hasn’t agreed that this matters.
Transformation without executive buy-in becomes an expensive internal argument. Instead: get one sponsor with budget authority to say it out loud, then call me.
-
03
You want someone permanent, in the room, five days a week.
Fractional is the wrong shape and I’ll tell you so in the first call. Instead: hire — and if the role is right, that’s engagement 03.
Sec. 07Contact
Start with a problem, not a CV
Three sentences are enough: what’s broken, what you’ve tried, and what “fixed” is worth.