Coaching, consulting, and workshops for startup founders

Grow Like You've Done It Before

Whether you're still trying to get to product-market fit or you're more concerned with your growth rate and keeping investors happy, we've got you covered.

Early-Stage Startups are Challenging

We've got experience with all the stages of startup life, from dreaming and founding, to building and testing to launching and growing. Every step has its challenges - don't waste time making mistakes that have been made before. Our experts will climb into the trenches with you and help you get where you need to be, faster.

  • You're pre-launch and just want your product to be ready already

  • You've got a beta product but you're still trying to get enough reference customers

  • You're planning a public launch but you've never done this before

  • You launched already but adoption isn't where you need it to be

  • You've got adoption but churn is too high and growth is slowing

  • Your investors are telling you it's time to hire your first product manager or head of product

Our Clients

Accrue Savings
Go Coach
Pipekit
Portfolio School
Astral Tabletop
YourBase
Plectica
Kelda
Rivet

Answer these questions with our help:

  1. Are we focused on the right user segment, problems, outcomes, and use cases?
  2. How might we support these use cases with user flows, designs, or prototypes?
  3. How well do these designs solve the problem?
  4. What is the minimum viable feature set for us to hit our milestones?
  5. What is the best way to develop these designs with our current resources?
  6. How do we know if we're on the right track?
  7. What should we be measuring and how often should we review the data?
  8. When and how do we run a beta program or a/b tests?
  9. What launch milestones should we set?

Get more done with these services:

  1. Identify the riskiest assumptions
  2. Conduct qualitative research (interviews & solution tests)
  3. Conduct quantitative research (product data analysis and new surveys)
  4. Synthesize research into product foundations: validated strategy, user segment, core behaviors, key metrics, and an outcomes-based roadmap
  5. Perform or review competitive audit
  6. Develop prototypes and/or wireframes for testing
  7. Evaluate available SaaS solutions
  8. Estimate resources needed for solutions
  9. Develop product backlog items (epics and user stories)
  10. Develop pricing and go-to-market strategy
  11. Develop and test marketing messages and channels
  12. Set and support the team towards launch milestones

The Product Science Principles

Over 15+ years in tech companies, founder Holly Hester-Reilly has developed product science, a theory for building high-growth products, teams, and companies.

People have more choices today than ever before, so product science focuses on creating experiences they want to be a part of. Our world changes fast, so product science relies on continuous feedback and rapid learning loops.

At its core, product science is about finding people’s pains and developing effective solutions for their problems – with the products we build, the processes we use, and the organizations we create.

Evidence-Based Product Strategy

Understand your users, your market, the product, and feasibility. Make informed decisions about which growth opportunities to pursue.

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Continuous Discovery & Delivery

Work in small, cross-functional teams using design thinking, lean startup, and agile software development. Focus on outcomes, not output.

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Empowered Teams

Set the vision. Communicate the values. Then empower autonomous teams with the context and authority to make great decisions quickly.

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We've Learned With The Best in Tech and Startups

“Holly is literally the strongest product manager who I have ever worked with in my career (and I've worked with LOTS of great ones; so that's saying a lot).”
Alyse Dunn
Alyse Dunn, Founder
CareCopilot
Formerly Venmo and MediaMath
Ephicient logoOE logo2020INC logoThe Paak logoPipelinx.co logoAriseHealth logo

What Startups Say About Us

When I was being coached by Holly, I was recently promoted to "SVP of Product: Games" at Arkadium. It was a new position and Arkadium hadn't had a history and process of Product Management. Holly brought specific and actionable experience as well as great tools that I could use to start supporting our growing product team and processes. I was able to instantiate player interview tools and habits that significantly improved the quality of our releases.

Tom Rassweiler
SVP Games and Product
Arkadium

Really great outcome at exec meeting. We have what feels like a clear road ahead for the first time in the history of this project. PSG has succeeded where others have failed. Well done!

Victoria Blake
Chief Product Officer
GTreasury

I was ready to move forward with what I thought was going to be a really stellar product hire. Thankfully, Holly advised me in that decision before I extended an offer to that candidate. She confirmed that I actually needed a product manager with significantly more experience than the candidate who I was considering. Had I moved forward with that hire without Holly's counsel, not only would I have wasted a lot of time and money, but I also would have created a really negative experience for that candidate. Holly saved me and that candidate. Holly will save you.

Alyse Dunn
Founder
CareCopilot

Data driven, execution oriented, leader, go getter. Those are the words I would use to describe Holly. Holly came in to Shutterstock when we desperately needed business direction for Skillfeed (a Shutterstock company). She conducted one of the best data driven business analyses I have seen. Holly collected a tremendous amount of data by surveying the competitive landscape, comparing various industry pricing models, categorizing thousands of user feedbacks and came up with concrete suggestions that are backed by data. Furthermore, Holly was able to be Product Owners on multiple successful teams. I would recommend Holly without reservation.

Han Chiu
CTO
Click Therapeutics

The impact Holly and H2R had on our company cannot be overstated. I'm trying to use everything Holly taught me - including doing frequent user interviews to get feedback. We did four interviews or so in the last two weeks.

Yves Junqueira
Founder and CEO
YourBase

I worked with Holly on bringing a large enterprise web product to market, and the job could not have been completed without Holly's leadership as the product owner. Holly is the rare product leader who is the complete package: empathetic to users, effective and fun for designers and engineers to work with, and trusted by executives to deliver on strategic KPIs and maintain transparency from concept to launch. I give Holly my most enthusiastic recommendation.

Dillon Zhang Forrest
Founder and CEO
Steady

Are you ready to grow like you've done it before?

We can teach you what a startup founder needs to know about product management and product leadership.

Check out our content for startups

Check out the The Product Science Podcast, read the Product Science Journal, or check out our articles to get a sense of our approach and the principles we work with.

Schedule a meeting

Set up a call to meet with Holly at a time that works for you.

Talk with us

We love to help you solve the challenges you're facing and we'll figure out if we're a fit to work together and in what ways.

Get started

We'll start by identifying what success looks like and then we'll make a plan to get there, together.

Let's Talk

I love to hear from executives and product leaders who want to build high-growth products, teams, and companies that can compete in today's fast-changing world.

Let's chat and see if we can work together.

Holly looking at camera