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10+ years of B2B product

Fractional Product Leader

I'm a member of your team—in your Slack, your meetings and tools, even reachable at your company email—but I work hourly and part-time. I onboard fast, and I cover strategy through execution, using AI throughout, including prototyping.

Fractional since July 2025, currently with Grapevine. Previous: LearnLux, Truepic, JW Player, PowerToFly

Alicia Hurst smiling, photographed indoors

I usually work with startups that look like this:

stage

Seed–Series B, $1M–$12M ARR

model

B2B or B2B2C SaaS — where the buyer and end-user are often completely different people

team

Whoever heads product now has never been employed as a product manager before

Sound like you?

Send me a note →

problems

Are these familiar?

You don't have an experienced product person.

As in, someone on the team who has actually held the title of product manager in the past, at a company with real scale, for multiple years. If you lack that, you're probably struggling in ways you can't quite describe.

Your team isn't making progress.

There's no shortage of things to build or fix. Everyone is busy. But you're not hitting revenue targets, or nothing in particular ever feels done. You need someone to make meaningful progress on a product that mostly works but needs to do way more.

You can't get the deal-driven vs. roadmap balance right.

Either the team is doing all deal work and the product is drifting, or they resent every customer request and resist it. Especially in enterprise, you need both. Finding that balance is something I do well.

Customer conversations aren't working.

No product team means engineers are talking to customers, or no one is at all. Or you're order-taking: shipping exactly what was asked for instead of understanding what's actually needed.

experience

Track record

10 years of full-time product management across Series A–E enterprise SaaS. From zero-revenue launches to $40M+ product lines. I've shipped things that scaled, and I've killed things that couldn't survive.

2022–2025

Truepic

Series BContent authenticity

I led 0→1 tools for showing the origin of media and whether it was AI-generated. We built an app in partnership with Microsoft and were named one of TIME's Best Inventions 2022. I also led the decision to sunset that product line when it wasn't hitting our business goals.

Case study →

Product areas

mobile SDKs, CLI, API, javascript SDK, mobile apps, developer tools

2017–2021

JW Player

Series D→EStreaming infrastructure

They were growing fast. I owned video players powering billions of plays—the Super Bowl, CNBC, IMDb—where any outage affected everyone. I shipped features globally and built processes that lasted.

Case study →

Product areas

javascript SDK, mobile SDKs, web application, API, open-source, developer tools

2015–2017

PowerToFly

Series ARecruiting platform

They built for the wrong customer. I led the pivot upmarket to the Fortune 500, requiring a full product rethink, and they saw a 17% revenue lift immediately after.

Case study →

Product areas

web application, marketplace, search, integrations

benefits

What I bring

A decade of experience on real, revenue-driving products.

I worked my way up in product management, reporting to everyone from directors and VPs to co-founders, and I've studied the thought leaders in this discipline seriously.

A thought partner, not an order-taker.

I work hard to align with your mission and your business needs, and I'll also bring researched opinions, tell you when I think you're going in the wrong direction, and proactively recommend a different course of action.

High ownership, even at part-time hours.

The time is fractional, but my mentality isn't. I'm looking for the most important problems, and I approach the work with rigor. I'm not merely checking in weekly with a status update like an outsider.

I'm genuinely good at talking to customers.

Sales and CS love inviting me to calls. And I don't rubber-stamp requests. I find solutions that are elegant, reusable, and sustainable — things that hold up across the product, not just for the deal in front of you.

services

Services

My typical engagements are open-ended, with a 14-day out and monthly billing.

Fractional Product Leader

20 hours/week starting at $160/hour

Own strategy, roadmap, and execution. Embedded in your tools and meetings. This is the standard engagement.

  • Full strategy + roadmap ownership
  • Discovery, scoping, and feature definition
  • Engineering partnership and process
  • Stakeholder management and alignment
  • Present in Slack, stand ups, and reviews

Fractional Product Executive

10 hours/week starting at $180/hour

Process, strategy, hiring, discovery. Senior judgment without owning a full product. Right for teams that have execution covered but need direction.

  • Product process and strategy
  • Roadmap review and challenge
  • Hiring support and PM mentorship
  • Discovery and research leadership

Product Peer (Peer Coaching)

1–2 hours/week starting at $1000/month

Your Product BFF. Google Meet + email support. Any role, any topic, any company. Not embedded, purely advisory.

  • Weekly sessions
  • Email support between sessions
  • No company minimum
  • Open to any role, including engineers wanting to improve their product thinking

About

I'm Alicia ('uh-LEE-sha'), a product leader who makes things better. I'm known for my pattern matching, organization, judgement, and truth-telling.

Prior to going fractional in 2025, I spent 10 years leading B2B2C products that helped enterprises, newsrooms, and broadcasters earn trust and reach audiences at scale. Product management keeps me engaged because it delights me when something just works.

My roots are in front-end web development—I first taught myself to code in 1999, which has always helped me have real technical conversations, set realistic expectations, and build trust with engineering teams. I've maintained aliciahurst.com since 2006 (documenting every iteration along the way), and I still occasionally make websites for others.

I live in Brooklyn, NY, where you'll find me snapping street photos on a walk, playing pickleball, or following a curiosity trail on Wikipedia. I'm available remotely.

Portrait of Alicia Hurst

Nice things former coworkers have said about me, after moving to new companies:

“I have a newfound appreciation for your level of knowledge and management skill, and it was truly a privilege working with you.”
“I wish you were [still] my PM!”

faq

Common questions

How is fractional different from hiring a consultant?

A consultant often delivers documents and leaves. I join your Slack. I'm in your meetings. I do the work, I don't just advise on it.

What if I already have someone doing product?

Great. I can work alongside them as a senior partner, filling strategy gaps, challenging blind spots, taking the high-leverage work off their plate.

How long does it take to see results?

I'm typically able to produce my first strategy doc or roadmap after about 60 hours of onboarding, with smaller wins along the way like attending and running meetings, assuming ownership over my scope, and process improvements.

Are you looking to go full-time?

No, I'm looking to stay fractional indefinitely. My goal is often to help you build toward hiring a full-time product leader, and I can help you define that role and evaluate candidates when you're ready.

blog

Latest product thoughts

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