Product & Experience / Distinct AI
01/ Distinct AI is a small startup. I'm the "glue" who turns abstractions into vision, product strategy & product roadmap.
The "Glue"
My Role as Head of Product & Experience
As Head of Product & Experience, I work with leadership to understand how our company brings value. It's abstract and messy with many moving pieces.
My job as a strategic “glue” is to make sense of these abstractions, visualize them into notes, spreadsheets, mockups, or by whatever means necessary to make them actionable.
Framework
Practical Product Management Framework
I’m neither an MBA nor a traditionally trained product manager. My business and operational acumen is from living through peaks and troughs of markets, startups, business ventures, and years of experimentation. As such, I’ve adopted a simple product management framework to transition Distinct AI from vision to strategy to roadmap:
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Vision is our company’s north star (long-term goal)
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Product strategy is our company’s direction and choices: what to build, who it is for, what problems to solve, how it will win, and which bets to pursue (mid-term: target segments, value prop, key outcomes)
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Product roadmap is our company’s time-phased steps, initiatives, releases that execute the strategy (short-term: releases, epics, features)
Operation
From Vision to Operation
Using this framework, I partner with leadership and teams to organize, plan, and execute towards Distinct AI’s vision by defining three distinct development eras: “Legacy”, “Next”, “Redux”. Each era has its own technical goals, design goals, initiatives, KPIs, etc.
By balancing mid-term strategic choices with a fluid, time-phased roadmap, our aim is to deliver specific solutions that solve problems based on market gaps and opportunities. Ultimately, this roadmap serves as an alignment tool for stakeholders and investors, prioritising a sophisticated user interface that maintains creative control without oversimplification.
Execution & Design
Execution, Design & Many "Hats"
Yes, I also design the user and customer experience. We’re a small team and scale by working with global contracting partners. More importantly, we all wear many hats, including:
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Branding, marketing materials
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Setting up and managing Confluence and Jira
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Designing, writing user stories, testing builds, etc.
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Building decks for prospective investors
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Writing request for proposals (RFPs)