I'm an operator-grade peer to CEOs of post-PMF software companies when the work cuts across more than one seat at the table - when the standard functional moves keep widening the gap rather than closing it. The problem isn't function-shaped. There's no seat at the table exactly shaped for it.
Across CEO, CPTO, CPO, and CTO seats over six platform shifts, I've watched the same shape arrive: the company that should be moving but isn't.
The work: I diagnose the actual shape, embed alongside the CEO for a bounded window, and transition into the right permanent structure on the other side.
What makes it hard isn't only the technical and operational dimension - it's the human-systems read underneath: what's actually happening between people in the leadership team, not just what's on the whiteboard. Get that read wrong, and the engagement falls apart under stress. Get it right, and you've unlocked the next level.
Four exits. Engagements are bounded, with capability transfer on the back end.
The assets and the constraint are the same thing
You have real customers, real distribution, and committed people who built it all. So why is all that making it harder to see what comes next?
You’ve been here before
Every major technology transition looks unsurvivable from inside it. That’s not a property of this one. That’s a property of transitions.
Your last PMF is now what's in the way
Your last PMF is becoming your next constraint. Not because you built something broken. Because you built something that worked