Jake McMahon

8+ years B2B SaaS · Ex-ad tech SaaS, healthcare SaaS

Fractional PM & Advisory

The expertise of five specialist hires — embedded in your team, at a fraction of the cost.

PM, strategy, analytics, A/B testing, and ML — one embedded partner covering disciplines you’d otherwise need 3 to 5 hires to fill. Your team learns by working alongside it every week. Shipped work gets measured. Every quarter ends with data your board can read, not a progress update. And over time: a product that grows faster, a team that compounds, and a valuation that reflects what product is actually delivering.

Book a 30-min call → See how it works →

From $97/hr — scope and schedule agreed before we start.

How each week runs

Plan the week together 45–60 min

Write briefs, shape work, close decisions Tue–Thu

Review what shipped, decide what's next 30–45 min

Typical engagement

90 days

Most teams end the first quarter with 3–5 meaningful product improvements shipped and measured — with clear data on what each one moved. Enough to show your board exactly what product did this quarter.

Active workstreams

2 max

A hard limit on what’s in-flight is what separates a busy backlog from shipped product. Two workstreams maximum — everything else waits its turn rather than slowing everything down at once.

Briefs with a measurement plan

100%

Success criteria are defined before build starts — not after. When the work lands, you know within the agreed window whether it moved the metric it was supposed to move.

The Problem

Ideas pile up. The backlog grows. What did ship —
nobody can prove it moved anything.

The problem isn't strategy. Your team knows what users need. The problem is that ideas sit in the backlog for months, the ones that do reach engineering aren't ready, decisions get reopened in every meeting, and the work that ships lands without any way to measure whether it worked — so next quarter starts with the same questions as last quarter.

Discovery is done. Delivery isn't.

"We know what users need. We just can't get it through engineering without months of back-and-forth."

Getting work ready to build

Shipped work isn't measured.

"We released three improvements last quarter. We have no idea if any of them actually moved the needle."

Measurement gap

Priorities drift every two weeks.

"Without a clear active/next/parked structure, every stakeholder conversation resets the queue."

Backlog clarity

Decisions keep getting reopened.

"The same questions come up in every meeting. Nothing closes. Engineering is waiting."

Decisions that won't close

The Model

Your team picks the right work, ships it clean,
and reads what it actually did.

Good product judgment, a clear measurement habit, and practical help getting work through to shipping — inside your team every week, not handed over in a document and left for you to figure out.

Align

Pick the right work

Backlog cut. Initiative selection. Success criteria defined before build begins.

Ship

Move it through engineering

Engineering-ready briefs. Clean handoffs. Decisions closed in 72 hours.

Measure

Read what actually changed

Measurement plan attached. Post-ship readout. Each result informs the next decision.

repeats each week · gets sharper every month

The backlog stops growing and starts moving.

Priorities get cut to Active/Next/Parked. The right things move. Stale ideas get parked instead of floating at the top of every sprint. Your team stops spending half of every planning session relitigating what should move and starts using that time to actually ship it.

Engineering gets clear briefs and stops blocking on questions.

Every piece of work reaches engineering with a problem statement, hypothesis, success criteria, scope, and measurement plan — all agreed before building starts. Engineering doesn't have to stop halfway through and wait for answers. The weeks your team spends on back-and-forth that should have been in the brief drop close to zero.

After something ships, you actually know whether it worked.

Every piece of work ships with a measurement plan. A few weeks later, the numbers come back — whether sign-up completion, activation, or retention moved, or didn't — and you know exactly what to do next. You stop releasing things and guessing. Each result tells you what to build next instead of starting from scratch.

Two Ways to Work Together

Two ways in. One standard: every initiative ships with a measurement plan attached.

Advisory · Rolling Monthly

Strategic Advisor

Your highest-stakes product decisions — what to prioritise, what to kill, what to test — get a second brain that's seen the same problems across multiple B2B SaaS teams. Monthly session plus async access. No delivery overhead, just better decisions.

What's included

Monthly 90-min strategy session — priorities, roadmap, and key decisions reviewed with senior product context
Async access for product decisions — nothing waits a week for a calendar slot
Roadmap and backlog reviews with ranked recommendations, not a list of options
Monthly written summary — what to keep, what to kill, what to move next
Experiment and measurement guidance — so your team tests the right things and reads results correctly

Best for: Founders and CPOs who want senior product thinking without a full embedded resource.

$97

/hr

Book a call →

Delivery Partner · Flexible Scope

Fractional Delivery Partner

Your team ships faster. Your initiatives reach engineering with zero ambiguity. Every shipped improvement has a measurement plan. And at the end of 90 days, your board has a clear commercial read on what product actually did last quarter.

What's included

Weekly planning session (45–60 min) — agree priorities, close open decisions, start the week knowing what's moving
Writing, shaping, and deciding through the week — briefs written, UX calls made, measurement plans attached. Engineering doesn't wait on questions.
Weekly review (30–45 min) — what shipped, what the numbers say, what changes next week
Full brief for every piece of work — problem, hypothesis, success criteria, scope, and measurement plan written before engineering starts
Measurement plan on every brief — so when something ships, you know within weeks whether it worked
Monthly workshop (60–90 min) — whatever is slowing things down most: where work is getting stuck, whether your analytics are answering the right questions, or which work to focus on next
Monthly summary — what shipped, what moved in the numbers, what to work on next
Decision log — every open question gets a decision within 72 hours, nothing gets relitigated

Best for: Product teams with strong discovery but a delivery gap — the ideas are there, the shipping and measurement aren't. You want to end next quarter with proof, not progress reports.

$97

/hr

Book a call →

First 90 Days

By day 90, your board has proof — not a progress report.

Most teams end their first quarter having shipped 3–5 meaningful product improvements, with a clear working pattern the team can sustain week to week, and numbers attached to every piece of work that shipped — enough to say exactly what product did last quarter, what it changed, and what comes next.

Phase 01

Days 1–14

Align and select

Backlog cut into Active/Next/Parked. Metrics standardised. 3–5 initiatives selected and packaged for engineering. By week two, your team knows exactly what it's building and why — and engineering isn't waiting for clarity.

Phase 02

Days 15–45

Ship and measure

First meaningful improvements live. First impact readout shows what moved — activation, retention, or both. Delivery rhythm is established. Your team has its first real read on what the product is doing to the metrics.

Phase 03

Days 46–90

Compound and expand

Shipping continues. Commercial reads get sharper — you can see which improvements moved revenue metrics and which didn't. Quarter readout gives you a focused Q2 plan backed by data, not gut feel.

By day 90: 3–5 meaningful improvements live in the product. Key user journeys measurably improved. Every shipped initiative has a commercial read attached. And a delivery system that gets faster and sharper each quarter — not slower and heavier. Your board has answers, not status updates.

What You Get

Every week your team knows what's moving. Every month you know what it did.

Weekly

Weekly delivery plan

What is moving, who owns it, what decisions are needed, and what done means for the week.

Engineering-ready initiative packages

Every initiative reaches build with a problem statement, hypothesis, success criteria, scope, non-goals, acceptance criteria, rollout plan, and measurement window — all defined before engineering starts. Mid-build resets drop to near zero.

Measurement package

Primary metric, supporting signals, event requirements, and QA checklist — so every shipped initiative gets a commercial read, not a shrug. You stop shipping things and wondering if they worked.

Decision log and action tracker

Open loops stay visible and die fast. The 72-hour rule keeps engineering unblocked. Your team stops losing sprint cycles relitigating last month's decisions.

Monthly

Monthly workshop (60–90 min)

Delivery bottleneck audit, initiative shaping, analytics alignment, or roadmap reset — whatever the highest-value constraint is.

Monthly impact summary

What shipped, what moved in metrics, what the early signals suggest, and exactly what to prioritise next. The board-ready version of what product did last month.

Delivery and analytics health review

Where delivery is stalling, where measurement is too weak, what to simplify or accelerate.

Right Fit

Strong product thinking, but shipping is the bottleneck? This is built for you.

Good fit

B2B SaaS teams with 8–100 engineers — enough throughput to benefit from delivery discipline
Strong product thinking exists, but execution lags behind — the ideas are there, the shipping isn't
Analytics is in place (Amplitude, PostHog, Mixpanel) but measurement discipline is inconsistent
Engineering receives unclear briefs — lots of back-and-forth, mid-build changes, reopened decisions
At least 3–4 meaningful product areas where improvement would move business metrics

Not the right fit

Pre-product-market fit startups — the problem is discovery, not delivery
Teams that need a full-time in-house PM to own a product domain permanently
Companies where engineering capacity is the primary constraint, not clarity and packaging
Businesses that want to outsource thinking entirely — this requires a capable internal counterpart

Who Runs This

Jake McMahon, ProductQuant

Jake McMahon

8+ years B2B SaaS product leadership · Behavioural Psychology + Big Data · Australian, based in Tbilisi

I've spent the last eight years inside B2B SaaS product teams — figuring out what to build, writing the briefs, making sure things actually get through to engineering, and then measuring whether they worked. I've done this across onboarding, retention, automation, reporting, and monetisation — and the problem is almost always the same: the team has good ideas but the work between deciding and shipping is where everything slows down or falls apart.

Working alongside a team rather than advising from outside is the model that fixes that. You get someone who's actually in it with you each week — helping pick what to build, writing the briefs, making the calls, and tracking what changes in the numbers. Teams I work with ship more of the right things, find out faster what worked and what didn't, and carry that way of working forward after we're done.

What I won't do

Project manage tickets without strategic context
Build slide decks instead of initiatives
Accept briefs that don't have a hypothesis and success criteria
Let decisions sit open for longer than 72 hours without a default

Do I still need an internal PM if I work with you?

Yes — ideally a product counterpart who owns domain decisions and can represent user context. I work alongside your PM, not in place of one. If you don't have a PM yet, advisory is the better starting point.

Common Questions

Questions worth answering before the call.

Most fractional PM engagements are pure time-for-hire — you get a senior PM who owns a product domain. This is different. The focus is delivery throughput and measurement discipline: moving the right initiatives through engineering, attaching measurement to shipped work, and compounding that learning month to month. It's closer to a delivery operating system than a resource rental.

It means every initiative reaches engineering with a clear problem statement, target user, hypothesis, success criteria, scope, non-goals, acceptance criteria, rollout plan, and measurement window — defined before the build starts. No ambiguity, no mid-build resets. The brief format is consistent, so engineering receives the same quality of input every time.

For Delivery Partner: two weekly sessions (45–60 min planning, 30–45 min review) plus one monthly workshop. Async communication stays focused and structured — no long Slack threads or status updates for their own sake. The model is designed to reduce total team overhead, not add to it.

Yes — the delivery layer sits across all three. Initiative packaging is designed to reduce friction at every handoff. I'll work with your design counterpart on UX decisions, your engineering lead on feasibility and scope, and your analytics owner on instrumentation. You'll need clear owners on your side for each function.

Primarily PostHog, Amplitude, and Mixpanel — but the measurement framework applies regardless of the tool. The brief format, hypothesis structure, and success criteria approach work with any instrumented product. If your analytics coverage is weak, part of the early engagement is identifying and prioritising the gaps.

If the engagement is working, you'll have a clearer picture of where the highest value is month to month. Most partnerships extend on a quarter-by-quarter basis. Some teams transition to Advisory after the delivery system is installed. Either way, the decision is made with data — what shipped, what moved, and what the team's capacity looks like going forward.