Karen Adie Product & Venture Consulting

Product & Venture Consulting

Senior product leadership for complex products and transformation.

I help founders, operators and transformation teams turn ambitious, regulated or legacy-heavy products into working ones – from discovery and MVP to launch, scale and replacement programmes.

Discuss an engagementSee selected work

Available for consulting and contract engagements

Karen Adie
Multi-market product leaderUK & Ireland · Europe · Middle East · US · Nigeria

Delivered at scale

A track record across scale, systems and markets

  • $75mraised for an embedded-finance platform where I led financial-services product
  • 0 → 50kretail borrowers in year one, scaled across three countries with a 97% repayment record
  • 500k+digital-bank users in the first year as Chief Product Officer
  • 4,000+businesses in six months and $3m GMV in year one for a B2B marketplace I founded
  • 30%acquisition uplift after redesigning a global-payroll SaaS journey
  • 16% MoMacquisition growth and a 30% retention uplift for a predictive-lending product

What I do

Product leadership that connects ambition to execution

I work across the full product lifecycle – combining strategic clarity, technical fluency and hands-on delivery leadership.

  1. 01

    Strategy & discovery

    Clarify the customer, commercial model, workflows, risks and the evidence required before build.

  2. 02

    MVP definition

    Turn ambition into prioritised scope, journeys, requirements, roadmaps and delivery-ready decisions.

  3. 03

    Cross-functional delivery

    Align founders, operators, design, engineering, data and partners around measurable outcomes.

  4. 04

    Pilot & iteration

    Design the operating model, launch plan and learning loop needed to prove value and scale responsibly.

Selected recent work

Complex products, turned into working ones

Client names are withheld; details are shared in conversation where appropriate.

Insurance · ClaimsSaudi Arabia

Saudi insurance-claims platform

MVP in development

Motor claims took roughly 17 days from approval to customer payment, across manual hand-offs and unclear ownership.

  • Defined a clear MVP scope for third-party and comprehensive claims on the insurer's own customers
  • Translated the process into a buildable workflow: roles, hand-offs, decision points, documents, statuses and exception paths
  • Designed operational control so speed never costs auditability, ownership or necessary human review
  • Planned a 500-transaction pilot to validate the operating and product model

A product designed around a ≤24-hour approved-claim-to-payment outcome.

Role Product definition, process translation, MVP scope and cross-functional delivery coordination

Proptech · CRM transformationUK & Ireland

Estate-agency CRM transformation

In delivery

Replacing an entrenched legacy CRM without losing the workflows agencies depend on – while still hitting a narrower, near-term pilot.

  • Mapped legacy workflows and competitor patterns across the UK market
  • Built the feature register separating the replacement baseline, pilot must-haves and high-value delights
  • Wrote PRDs, user stories, dependencies, data requests and end-to-end workflows with full traceability
  • Sequenced low- and high-fidelity design so engineering started from usable outputs

A scoped pilot for onboarding, applicants and profiles that the wider replacement programme can build on.

Role Product lead for onboarding, applicants and profiles

Proptech · Data & demandUnited States

Property-intelligence and leasing products

Current portfolio

Four products addressing different parts of one operating system – assets, demand, home operations and managed support – each needing evidence before investment.

  • GIS operator intelligence: scoring 14,000+ assets with market layers and a multi-city roadmap
  • End-to-end leasing pilot spanning landing pages, paid acquisition, lead capture, phone/SMS routing and attributable leases
  • Premium home operations: home records, guided visits, maintenance and a vendor marketplace
  • Productised managed support with evidence gates – manual service first, smallest useful portal second

A portfolio where each product earns the next stage of investment with evidence.

Role Product lead across a four-product portfolio

Sectors

Regulated, operational and data-heavy products

  • Fintech
  • Insurance
  • Healthtech
  • Proptech
  • HR & payroll
  • Marketplaces
  • Agritech
  • Public sector
  • AI products

Geographic track record

Europe
UK & Ireland · Netherlands · Germany · Portugal
Middle East
Saudi Arabia
Americas
United States
Africa & Asia
Nigeria · Philippines

Ways to work together

Bring me the ambition. I’ll help turn it into a product.

3–12 months

Contract product leadership

A senior product lead embedded in your team for a defined programme – discovery, roadmap, requirements and delivery, with clear ownership.

1–3 days a week

Fractional product leadership

Head-of-product ownership for founders and operators who need senior strategy, roadmap and team leadership before (or instead of) a full-time hire.

Scope-led

Delivery team

Scale from strategy into a cross-functional squad – product managers, designers and engineers – under one accountable product lead.

Common starting points: Product strategy & MVP · Product audit & recovery · Legacy replacement scoping · AI & automation opportunities

How I work

A disciplined path from uncertainty to a working product

  1. 01

    Discover

    Users, workflows, constraints and business model

  2. 02

    Define

    Outcomes, MVP, priorities, requirements and risks

  3. 03

    Design

    Journeys, prototypes, data and operating model

  4. 04

    Deliver

    Backlog, team coordination, QA and launch readiness

  5. 05

    Learn

    Pilot evidence, metrics, feedback and next release

Build the smallest coherent product that can produce credible evidence – not merely the smallest list of features.
  • BSc Computer Science
  • MSc Management
  • Founder and operator perspective
  • Product leadership from start-up to scale

Contact

Discuss an engagement

Tell me about the product, the challenge and the timing. I’ll come back within one working day – and can share the full product portfolio.

Or email karen@mykaya.ai