Your roadmap
is fiction
( and everybody knows it)
You built a good team. You have paying clients. And you're spread thinner than Nutella.
I get teams un-stuck so founders can run their company again. That's my job.
Is this you?
You're a founder of a company between 5 and 20 people. You have revenue. You have a team. And every quarter ends the same way: busy, but behind.
"200 items in the backlog. No idea which 5 matter."
"Half my week is checking if the right things are moving."
"I promised a client March. It's May."
You've been trying to solve this yourself long enough.
Let's solve it together
I don't advise from the sideline. I join the team 2 to 3 days a week, do real product work, and fix what's causing the chaos. Most engagements run 3 to 6 months. The goal from day one is a team that runs without me.
We talk
30 minutes. You tell me where it hurts, I tell you if I can help. No pitch, no deck.
1
I join
I work alongside your team, not above them. We clear the path together, and your people grow into it.
2
We fix
Whatever's actually causing the chaos. A backlog of 200 that should be 20. A team waiting on you for every decision. Clients nobody has talked to in months.
3
I leave
When the team runs without me, and someone on it has grown into the role, I'm done. That's the whole point.
4
What actually happened
Factry
Factory operating system for industrial clients. ~12 people, bootstrapped, Ghent.
Their last client implementation took 18 months and nearly broke the team. A new one was coming.
I started on the factory floor with the machine operators. Built prototypes, ran them back through the people who'd actually use the system, and refined the designs before a single line of code was written.
On the team side, I turned a one-hour standup into 15 minutes, made sure knowledge wasn't trapped in one person's head, and got developers answers in hours instead of days.
The next comparable implementation took 6 months.
Spotto
Belgian real estate marketplace for CIB, the federation of real estate agents. First product hire.
CIB had tried to build a platform like this before and it hadn't worked. The team was building but nobody was validating it with users.
That changed when I joined. Three user sessions a week, every week. Decisions stopped being about who spoke loudest and started being about what users actually needed.
Everything followed from there. We built the right things and made sure people could find them. The platform grew from 10,000 to over 100,000 monthly visitors.
Two years later, Spotto was a recognised name in Belgian real estate.
Pricing
I work in two ways.
Sparring
For founders or product leads who have a team but no one to think with.
You're making product decisions every week and most of them feel like guesses. You don't need someone embedded. You need someone who's been in the seat and will tell you what they actually think.
What to prioritise, how to structure the team, whether to say yes to that client request or push back.
What's included:
60-minute session, video or in person
Follow-up notes with anything we discussed
€150 per session. Book when you need one.
This is not embedded work. I don't join your tools or your rituals. You bring the decisions, I help you make better ones.
Embedded
For teams that need someone in the room doing the work, not just advising on it.
There's no product function, or the one you have isn't working yet. You need someone alongside the team, in the standups, in the client calls, in the planning sessions, building the habits that make your team run without them.
This is what I did at Factry and Spotto.
What's included:
2 to 3 days per week, in your tools, your rituals, your rhythm
The work itself: user research, prototyping, backlog restructuring, team coaching
A defined transition when the team is ready
€800/day. Start with 3 to 4 days to see if it works.
That first engagement costs €2,400 to €3,200. Most founders keep me on for 3 to 6 months. Roughly what a senior hire costs, without the recruitment process, the notice period, or the RSZ headache.
When to look elsewhere
I’m not the right fit for everyone. And that’s fine.
If you fall into the categories below, you should probably look elsewhere:
Large corporates looking for a project manager to report upward
Teams that want a methodology imposed on them without context
Founders who want strategy advice but aren't ready to actually change anything
Who I am
I started out as a developer. I know what it feels like to sit in a standup with no clarity on why you're building what you're building, or whether anyone has actually thought through what "done" looks like.
That frustration is what pushed me into product work. Not because I wanted to manage people, but because I wanted to be the reason the team could actually focus.
Over time I realised the two things are inseparable. You can do great product work, but if the team can't deliver it because of unclear priorities or fragmented knowledge, none of it matters. And you can have a high-functioning team that's building the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
That's the problem I solve. Not one or the other. Both, at the same time, from the inside.
I'm based in Ghent. When I'm not doing this, I'm probably outside walking my Weimaraner, da Vinci.
Let’s talk
If you read the "is this you?" section and felt seen, grab a slot.
I work with a small number of clients at a time, so availability changes. If nothing fits your schedule, drop me a mail at bart.pinnock@nimflex.be and we'll figure it out.
Your Questions, Answered
How do I know if this is the kind of problem you solve?
This usually works best for teams that already have a product and a capable engineering team, but where progress feels slower than it should.
Typical signs are:
the backlog keeps growing but never really empties
deadlines slip or priorities change constantly
product decisions keep escalating to the founder
the team is busy, but it's hard to explain what actually moved forward
If that sounds familiar, you're probably in the situation I usually step into.
What does working together actually look like?
I work inside the team's normal rhythm.
I'm in your tools, your standups, and your planning sessions. I'm reviewing work with engineers, clarifying priorities with founders, and helping the team make decisions faster.
A typical week might include things like:
reshaping the backlog so it reflects real priorities
clarifying what a feature actually needs to achieve
talking to users to validate assumptions
helping the team unblock decisions that have been circling for weeks
I don't observe from the sidelines, I work with the team.
Will this disrupt the team?
Usually the opposite.
The goal isn't to impose a new framework or slow things down with process. It's to remove friction so the team can focus on building.
Most changes happen gradually inside the team's existing rhythm. Over time you should see fewer escalations, clearer priorities, and meetings that actually end with decisions.
What exists at the end that didn't before?
A few things tend to become visible:
a backlog that reflects real priorities rather than every idea anyone ever had
a team that can run its own rituals without needing someone to facilitate them
decisions about what to build next that the team can explain clearly
fewer product questions bouncing back to the founder
In short: a product function that runs without constant intervention.
How do we know it's working?
You'll usually feel it before you can measure it.
Escalations become less frequent. Meetings get shorter. Decisions start sticking instead of being revisited every few weeks.
Within the first few weeks the team usually starts asking better questions and unblocking themselves faster. We'll agree on a small set of indicators at the start so there's something concrete to point to as things improve.
How do we know when it's done?
When the team no longer needs me to run well.
That usually means someone internally has grown into a product role, or you've hired the right person to take it forward.
I don't phase out on a fixed date. I phase out when the foundation is solid enough for the team to carry on without me.
Why not just hire someone full-time?
You might, and I'll help you do that when the time is right.
But hiring into a chaotic product setup rarely works well. A new product manager often spends months just trying to understand what's broken before they can start fixing it.
My role is to stabilise the system first. By the time we're done you'll know exactly what kind of product person you actually need, which makes that hire far more likely to succeed.
What if we start working together and it turns out not to be the right fit?
That's why the first step is always small.
We start with a short engagement to understand the situation and see whether the work is useful for your team. If it's not helping, we stop.
No long commitments, no complicated contracts.