Overview

Hew Suber, MBA

Fractional product leadership

I shape product direction alongside teams building with AI, and stay close enough to execution to back the call.

Eighteen years building for Meta, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Opendoor, CNN, Coca-Cola, and early-stage teams. I do the work myself, then the team ships without me.

On a recent engagement, the prototype went to engineering as the spec, and a scoped project became standing product and design direction. Read the case study.

What it sounds like when someone needs me

We build faster than we can decide what to ship. The demo works. Real customers still need us on the call to get value. We're hiring engineers, but nobody actually owns product. We can't get it to self-serve. Every account needs a person in the loop. The model performs, but people don't trust the output enough to act on it. The roadmap is full and nobody can say which thing carries the outcome.

Who they are

Stage

Seed to Series B. Roughly 10 to 100 people.

Kind of company

AI-native products that decide, recommend, or automate. B2B software moving toward self-serve.

Who I talk to

Founder, CEO, or CTO, or the product lead who brings me in.

What I actually do

Map the system. Most of the problem is visible. Nobody has had time to draw it in one place.
Find the load-bearing decision. One decision holds up the rest.
Make it legible. A person should know what to do, and why.
Build the trust layer. Evidence, controls, and a way back when it's wrong.
Ground it in measurement. Decide how we'll know before we ship. Otherwise, whatever happens looks like it worked.
Sequence it. Each release makes the next one easier.

Engagements

System Read

One week, fixed scope. $9K. A written read of the system, down to file and line. The decision the product is waiting on, named. A focused working prototype of one proposed change, aimed at the gap.

Direction Sprint

Four weeks, fixed scope. $25K. A direction document, a running prototype with the direction inside it, and the sequence the team can carry.

Standing Engagement

I work alongside whoever owns product, or fill the seat if no one does. $12K to $20K/mo. Direction is the floor: $12K, in writing, on a schedule. Execution is the dial, set monthly: up toward $20K when something needs building, back down when it doesn't. Same agreement, and the context doesn't reset.

I read the codebase before I design, so the work starts from what is already true. Advisory is $1,600/mo: a bookable weekly session of up to an hour. It comes after an engagement, because I can't advise on a product I haven't read. System Reads book by the week. I take one Direction Sprint or Standing Engagement at a time.

How engagements start

A 30-minute working session. No deck, no pitch. Bring whatever is stuck. We work out what's going on and where to start. If it isn't work I do, I'll say so and point you to someone better. A System Read needs no proposal. It starts on an agreed Monday once I have read-only access, and I deliver the following Monday. Longer work gets a proposal after I understand it.

Book a working session Download the one-pager (PDF)

Pass this along

If you know a team this fits, send them the link. It asks nothing of them.

Contact

hew@bayesianleaf.co bayesianleaf.co Atlanta, GA, working worldwide