AI Product & Strategy Consultant
Make better product bets when the answer isn't obvious.
I help founders and product teams find where AI creates real value, validate opportunities, and turn promising ideas into products people use and pay for. I help teams use AI to learn, decide and deliver faster.
Most recently Principal PM, AI at Envato · Previously LawVu, Xero and Trade Me
Wellington, New Zealand · Working across NZ and Australia
Book a conversationHow I can help
AI Product Strategy & Execution
Identify the right AI opportunities, make evidence-backed product bets and turn promising ideas into products customers use and pay for. Hands-on where needed.
Should we build this — and what should it actually be?
Establish whether there is a meaningful customer problem, who has it, what they value and whether the opportunity warrants further investment. Reach an evidence-based invest, revise or stop decision.
We know AI matters. Where should it actually show up in our product?
Identify where AI creates genuine customer and commercial value, shape the workflow and experience, and work through quality, cost, trust, differentiation and adoption trade-offs.
We’ve launched, but adoption or economics need work.
Investigate use-case fit, quality, trust, onboarding, model costs, pricing and repeat use to decide what to change.
AI-enabled Product Teams
Use AI across discovery, research, analysis, prototyping and delivery to move faster, learn faster and make better product decisions.
We’re building quickly, but need to learn what’s working.
Connect customer conversations, product usage, market signals and experiments so the team can make better decisions and adapt faster.
We want our product team to use AI properly — not just experiment with tools.
Improve how the team researches, discovers, prototypes, analyses and makes decisions with AI — using real product work and practical workflows the team can continue themselves.
Building got easier. Knowing what to build didn’t.
GenAI has made software much faster and cheaper to prototype and build.
The bottleneck has now shifted. The challenge now is deciding which customer problem matters most, where AI creates a real step-change, what to validate before scaling investment, how quickly the team learns from real use and whether the resulting product can earn trust, repeat use and willingness to pay.
I start with the decision that needs to be made, then look for the evidence most likely to change it: customer conversations, product usage, market signals, prototypes, experiments, AI evaluations, or model and pricing trade-offs. I can also work alongside product teams to improve how they use AI across research, discovery, prototyping, analysis and decisions. The result should be better product judgement and a clearer path to action.
Selected experience
Envato: GenAI product leadership- Took GenAI image, video and audio capabilities from Labs into the core product, working across customer experience, model evaluation, routing and quality/cost trade-offs.
- Envato: AI-enabled product work
- Built and used an agentic PM operating system in day-to-day product work, combining customer interview analysis, quantitative analysis in Snowflake, competitive research and opportunity shaping to focus attention on the highest-value product decisions.
LawVu- Shipped GenAI legal workflows and led AI/search product work across discovery, retrieval, positioning and monetisation.
Trade Me- Led data-science product work across search ranking, recommendations, predictive pricing and automated valuations.
Xero- Led product strategy and teams for core small-business workflows across Invoicing and Projects.
Ways we can work together
A focused piece of work
Tackle a specific product decision or opportunity — from discovery and validation to product shaping, product-team AI enablement or adoption. Work toward a clear recommendation, tested prototype, improved workflow or evidence for the next investment decision.
Embedded product leadership
Hands-on leadership alongside founders, engineers, designers and product teams for a defined period, through discovery, shaping, delivery, learning and capability-building.
Advisory
A regular sounding board for founders and product leaders making difficult AI product decisions.
The shape depends on the problem. We’ll agree the decision or outcome that matters, then structure the work around it.
About me
I’m based in Wellington and work across NZ and Australia. My background runs from analytics and data science through search/ML and senior product leadership to GenAI product work. I also build products myself and stay hands-on with customers, engineers, prototypes and data.
More about me
Outside client work, I build small AI products and tools, write about AI and product development, and co-host product and AI communities in Wellington.
Current focus
- Independent consulting: helping founders and product teams make better product bets, shape useful AI products, learn faster and improve how they work with AI.
- Building personal AI products and tools including SuhelOS, Codex prototype scaffolding, Parallax and small products for family and personal use.
- Co-host Meetups in Wellington: ProductTank Wellington, Wellington AI Engineering & Lenny's Meetup.
Personal projects
JobAlchemist
An AI workflow tool for job seekers focused on decision quality, CV improvement, and job applications.
Parallax
Escape the LLM echo chamber. Open-source starter for assembling configurable groups of LLMs, running your prompts, comparing the results, and synthesizing a stronger final answer.
Codex prototype skills
Tokenmaxxing for builders: Codex gives you plenty of tokens, so use all of them to explore, expand, and sharpen ideas instead of leaving capability on the table. A starter for building ideas quickly in the Codex App, iterating fast, and turning rough concepts into working prototypes with less friction.
Job'D!
Cards Against Humanity inspired fun game for job seekers. It generates absurd job titles and made-up candidates to screen Yah or Nah, bringing humour to stressful job searching.
Zen tile swap
A fun game for my wife who likes little games but hates ads. Made with love so she gets max enjoyment :).
AI Knowledge sidekick
Curating and querying knowledge from Readwise Reader.
Career history
-
AI Product & Strategy Consultant
-
Principal Product Manager - AI
Co-founder
-
Principal Product Manager - AI & Search
Principal Product Manager
Lead PM Core Protocol
-
Senior Group Product Manager
-
GM Product - Manage Sales
Product Manager
Senior Product Manager
-
Product Manager - Jobs
-
Product Manager - Data Science
-
Data Science Team Lead & Product Manager
-
Head of Analytics (acting)
-
Analytics Manager (acting)
-
Senior Data Analyst
Have an important product or AI decision to make?
Book a conversation to discuss what you’re trying to achieve, where you’re stuck, and whether I can help.
Book a conversation