Product Strategist

About the Role

This role sits at the center of a fast-moving AI venture studio that is part of a four-pillar organization combining transformation consulting, venture building, a proprietary software platform, and a capital fund. The Product Strategist is the discovery and workflow-analysis backbone of the studio, turning stakeholder conversations into the workflow maps, value-pool analyses, use-case sequences, and engineer-ready specs that builders actually execute against. The studio originates new ventures by identifying patterns across consulting engagements, then builds and backs those products with in-house capital and distribution, so the work is genuinely zero-to-one and high-stakes from day one.

The ideal candidate combines MBB-tier or top-tier consulting rigor with real hands-on product or operator experience at a startup or technology company. You have enough business sense to assess how a market makes money and enough product instinct to determine what to build in order to capture that value. You are an AI tinkerer, comfortable with Python and modern AI tools, and you show evidence of building or experimenting outside of your day job. You thrive in uncertainty, know your own impact metrics, and can go toe-to-toe with senior operators and investors without needing a playbook handed to you.

Key Responsibilities

1. Lead stakeholder and operator interviews, synthesize unstructured inputs into task-level workflow maps, and identify where value pools sit, including for businesses that do not yet exist
2. Sequence use cases by value at stake and technical feasibility, and defend the prioritization to Product Architects and engineers
3. Translate stakeholder needs into agentic-capability requirements, framing workflows as rebuilds rather than incremental enhancements
4. Write engineer-ready specs including priority questions, acceptance criteria, and data contracts that land buildable without back-and-forth
5. Define golden and evaluation datasets and set success benchmarks alongside users and the Applied AI Engineer
6. Run the full adoption cadence, including demo prep, pre-reads, follow-ups, training sessions, and feedback loops, to drive real usage on each venture
7. Maintain a clean decision log of crisp memos and decision records so each venture's product thread stays traceable long after the meeting ends

Required Skills & Experience

• 3 to 7 years of total experience combining MBB-tier or top-tier strategy consulting with a hands-on product or operator role at a startup or technology company; candidates coming directly from consulting without startup or product operator experience are unlikely to be a fit
• Demonstrated ability to assess how businesses make money, map markets, and calculate value for a given engagement
• Real product instincts at the zero-to-one stage, not just product enhancement or roadmap grooming
• Evidence of AI fluency and technical tinkering, such as Python proficiency, personal side projects, a GitHub presence, or meaningful use of modern AI tools in day-to-day work
• Strong written communication skills for producing specs, memos, and decision records that others act on without clarification
• Ability to work in-person 3 days per week in New York or Chicago

Preferred Skills

• Experience working inside or alongside a venture studio, early-stage fund, or PE-backed transformation context
• Background that bridges investment or finance (private equity, investment banking, or venture) with product execution, similar to a banking or PE analyst who moved into a product role
• Demonstrated entrepreneurial behavior inside a large organization, such as launching a net-new product line, standing up a new capability, or owning a project through to measurable impact
• Familiarity with agentic AI workflows and the ability to frame product requirements in terms of agent capabilities rather than traditional feature sets
• Chicago-based candidates are especially encouraged to apply, as the studio is actively building out its Chicago office