The role of chief product officer has seen a lot of change in recent years. Once seen as the leader on product vision and user experience, today’s CPO is expected to bridge the gap between customers, technology and commercial strategy.
A growing number of European startups are replacing the traditional CPO with a hybrid chief technology product officer, a role that combines deep technical knowledge with product leadership.
And as Sequoia’s VP of talent Zoe Hewitt pointed out in a recent episode of the Sifted podcast, some founders have been able to delay making “heavy-hitting” product hires by splitting responsibilities between other execs.
Sifted checked in with four product leaders across Europe, and asked them: What’s keeping you up at night?
Steph Willis, chief product officer at Spruce
Spruce builds an operating system for heat pump installers
Keeping devs close to customers as we scale
When we were small, every developer had to do customer support calls, training calls and even sales calls. That meant they had to learn how buildings lose heat, how installers price their work, and how stressful it is to plan a complex plumbing job while a homeowner peppers you with questions. We all helped new customers use the product for the first time, noticed poor UX choices we'd made, felt it personally when the product missed the mark and were stoked when a user discovered a feature they felt was made for them.
That closeness meant our devs both understood the problems we were solving, and cared deeply about the real people we were solving them for. When you know your customers by name and can picture them using the thing you're building, you just do a much better job of building it.
That model is starting to break as we scale though. With a fully built-out commercial function and a bigger engineering team, devs no longer need to do training and sales calls. – indeed, iIt starts to feel a bit contrived and a poor use of specialist resources for them to do so.
The challenge is that without those direct interactions, our developers will end up increasingly insulated from the people whose problems they’re solving.
Clearly the product function has to pick up some of the slack here, but detailed product requirement documents don’t allow devs to feel the pain customers are feeling and might lead to us missing alternative, creative solutions to the problems we’re trying to solve. And it’s also just a lot less fun for our developers.!
We’re working on various ways to maintain the essence of those early days while working at a much greater scale, but we haven’t cracked it yet.
Dmitry Zlokazov, global head of product at Revolut
Revolut is a financial superapp
Internal operational complexities
The biggest challenge we face is keeping up the pace of innovation Revolut is known for, while ensuring every product meets the same high standards for quality in the 38 countries where Revolut is available.
We’re building two interconnected ecosystems, one for personal finance and lifestyle, and another for businesses. That means as head of product I have to navigate different financial systems, regulations and consumer behaviours, without compromising on experience.
To manage that complexity, we’ve taken a “platformisation” approach. We’ve centralised the more complex, behind-the-scenes parts of our products, such as customer onboarding, backoffice, FX, communications and single sign-on (SSO), into shared systems that every product team can build on.
This means teams aren’t wasting time solving the same problems repeatedly, and can instead focus on what really matters: building innovative products with unparalleled UX. It’s already made a huge difference, allowing us to launch products like credit cards, mortgages, own ATMs and even eSIM quickly, at scale, and with consistent quality.
Adapting the products to suit local needs
Another big focus is what we call a “localised global offering.” The challenge is delivering a unified Revolut experience globally while still adapting to local needs, whether that’s local payment methods or regional subscription benefits. Done well, it removes friction for customers and makes Revolut feel relevant wherever they are in the world.
Amy Rushby, director of product at Carmoola
Carmoola is a fintech which offers loans to buy used cars
Balancing realism and ambition for AI
Every product leader right now is feeling the pressure to “do something with AI”. It’s in every board meeting and every investor conversation, and there’s an expectation that you’re already using it everywhere. But the reality is most companies don’t yet have the data infrastructure or engineering foundations to do it properly.
The easy and tempting thing is to bolt AI onto existing systems just to tick a box. But the harder, and ultimately more valuable, thing is to step back and make sure you’re solving a real problem for your customers.
Our mission is and has always been to make car finance simpler, fairer and more transparent, and AI absolutely has a role to play in that — whether it’s improving affordability checks or helping people make better decisions — but it can only do that when it’s built on solid foundations.
The challenge for a CPO is managing that tension: keeping teams and stakeholders excited about what’s possible with AI, without getting distracted by what’s fashionable. It’s about progress, not hype.
Nikita Miller, chief product officer at TravelPerk
TravelPerk is a platform for managing business travel and spend
Staying close to users
With two strategic acquisitions in less than a year, things are moving fast for us, and that’s a great place to be. The challenge for CPOs is keeping up that pace without losing focus on what really matters to customers. We need to stay close to users, building for real-world complexity and still deliver the value, simplicity and reliability that users expect of us.
We’re expanding how we engage with our users. By working closely with our Customer Advisory Board (CAB) and hosting regional community events we can solve our users’ biggest pain points and meet their local needs.
Securing the best talent
Which brings me to the second challenge, talent strategy. Local resonance matters especially if your product operates in highly regulated areas, meaning we need engineers and product teams who truly understand the priorities of local customers as we expand our reach. For example, we’re doubling down on our US ambitions and are actively hiring engineering, product and design talent in the region.
