Who it's for
Most requests fall into one of five situations. The tier follows from the situation, and the scope check below settles the edge cases.
- Pre-seed or seed, no PM yetTurn the founder's vision into a scoped MVP, the three numbers that say it works, and a backlog engineers can start on Monday.Sprint
- Seed to Series A, first PM hire pendingRun product two to three days a week until the hire lands, then hand over cleanly.Fractional
- SME or scale-up with a PM gapLead a launch, a mobile redesign or a new product line, or cover a leave with full ownership.Interim
- An app that is live but not growingOnboarding, activation and retention taken apart, the three bets most likely to move the number picked, and the number put on a dashboard.SprintAudit
- Fintech or crypto with an integration or compliance deadlineOne flow shipped right: payments, on/off-ramp, KYC, custody or exchange integration. Rarer, but I have done it and it shows in the work below.SprintFractional
How an engagement runs
Drawn on the route I walked solo in October 2024, from Lukla to the summit of Gokyo Ri. Every climb ends a little higher than the last. Scroll to climb.
Scoping call30 minutes · free
You describe the product and the deadline. I ask about users, data, integrations and what "done" means. You leave with a tier and a rough scope, whether or not we work together.
Lukla · the startWritten scopeWithin 3 working days
A one-page statement of work: tier, deliverables, timeline, price. One master agreement per client, one SOW per engagement. No hourly tracking, no open-ended time and materials.
Namche BazaarDiscoveryWeek 1
I use the product before I write about it. Interviews with the people who know where it hurts, a pass over your analytics and support tickets, the competitors' apps walked through with real accounts, and every constraint written down.
PhortseKPI baseline and tracking planWeek 1 to 2
Before anything is designed, we agree what success means: one north-star metric, the two or three that drive it, and the guardrails that must not drop. I write the event tracking plan (events, properties, owners), check what your analytics already capture, and record today's numbers as the baseline.
DingbocheWireframes and prototypeWeeks 2 to 3
Clickable wireframes for the screens that matter, in your product's own design tokens, so the team reacts to a prototype rather than a paragraph.
Gorak ShepPRD and backlogWeeks 3 to 4
A PRD with the reason next to every decision, and a prioritised backlog with acceptance criteria your engineers can estimate without a meeting. The tracking events ship inside the same tickets as the features.
DzonglaHandoffLast week
Walkthrough with engineering and design, open questions answered in writing, and the dashboard and alerts wired to the metrics we agreed in week one.
Gokyo Ri · the summitMeasure and reportAfter launch · weekly on retainers
The numbers read against the baseline: what moved, what didn't, and what to bet on next, in an impact report rather than a claim. On retainers this becomes the weekly rhythm: roadmap, rituals, releases, stakeholder updates.
Gokyo Ri · the view from the top
You pay for judgment. The typing is automated.
I run about a dozen specialist Claude Code agents, each owning one phase, from the first question to the stakeholder update. None of them drafts before it asks: a short round of questions with my recommended answer first, so we decide before we produce.
The scoping call becomes a written scope the same way: your interview, turned into epics, open decisions and the questions that change the estimate, before any number reaches a proposal. In week one I build a knowledge base for your product: your API, your glossary, your decisions. Every agent reads from it, so field names, statuses and numbers come from your source of truth, not a model's memory. At handover it is yours, or it is deleted.
What stays human: the interviews, the trade-offs, the call on what not to build, and every decision a customer, an investor or a regulator will ask you to justify.
- Ask firstQuestion rounds before any draft, and a "grill me" mode that challenges every assumption on the big bets.
- DesignClickable wireframes in your product's tokens, from a quick sketch to an approved prototype with its decisions locked.
- Spec & planFlow maps, PRDs and tickets with acceptance criteria, sliced into an order your team can ship, in your backlog's conventions.
- Build & QAA preview link you can click on your phone, and test scripts run against staging. Failed checks are fixed and retested, only the failed ones, at most twice before I step in.
- ReviewFinished work goes to a reviewer with fresh context and a written rubric. The agent that wrote it never grades it; two rounds, then a human call.
- ReportA weekly status with decisions needed and a change-request log, a KPI baseline at kickoff and an impact report at the end, so the value is measured, not claimed.
Guardrails run as code: nothing deploys, ships or goes out under your name without an explicit yes. Each client gets an isolated workspace that other clients' sessions cannot open, nothing of yours trains a model, and the whole toolchain is regression-tested every week.
Which PM you get
Most teams need one or two of these at a time. Each comes with work that proves it, from case studies or from the CV.
0→1 PM
Takes a vague ambition to a first version people use.
- Yellow AI-agent trading an open-source MCP server, a hosted connector and in-app agent onboarding, from no definition to shipped →
- The Shib a media product from zero to 50,000 subscribers in 3 months and $30K/month →
- VegaX a blockchain game from MVP scope to launch in 3 months
Typical fit · Sprint · Interim
Growth PM
Finds where a funnel leaks, sets the metric, and bets on the fixes that move it.
- Best Wallet swap failures cut 40% in 90 days, on a 35,000 MAU wallet →
- ShibaSwap redesign +30% retention and +20% activation in 30 days, by cohort
- Yellow Perps Race a trading competition with a fee-funded prize pool, plus referral and KOL programmes
Typical fit · Sprint · Audit
Delivery PM
Gets a hard, multi-team thing over the line on a date.
- ShibaSwap V2 → V3 liquidity migration in under 60 days, +15% TVL on $20M
- Yellow Portfolio two pages merged into one: five views, fifty specced states →
- Yellow mobile full perpetuals parity on a phone, liquidation previews included
Typical fit · Fractional · Interim
Research PM
Talks to users and the data before writing a requirement.
- Schneider Electric 15+ discovery interviews and workshops to validate a SaaS dashboard MVP
- Yellow MCP persona UAT as a developer, a trader and a retail user on a phone →
- Best Wallet user research behind manual gas fees and speed-up / cancel
Typical fit · Sprint · Teardown
Technical PM
Owns APIs, protocols and the contract engineers build against.
- Crypto payments API integration guide reconciled with its OpenAPI contract, a 73-scenario stage environment →
- Yellow MCP tool surface, authentication and the read / trade permission model →
- Konstellation 80+ validators onboarded on a Cosmos Layer-1
Typical fit · Sprint · Spec review
AI-native PM
Builds AI products, and builds product work with AI.
- Agent workflow about a dozen specialist agents, from question rounds to QA →
- Yellow MCP AI agents trading on a user's account, safely →
- Best Wallet an AI support chatbot on Intercom for self-serve support
Typical fit · Every tier
Three tiers, priced by scope
Every tier is one person covering three jobs that usually need three hires. Tiers are set by scope, counted in epics and squads, never by client size. A startup with five epics is a Fractional engagement; an established company wanting one onboarding flow fixed is a Sprint. Longer commitments get a lower effective rate in exchange for predictable weeks.
Discovery, KPIs, roadmap, PRDs, backlog, delivery and launch.
Flows, wireframes, clickable prototypes and UI in your design system.
Working prototypes, landing pages, preview deploys, small front-end fixes and internal tools.
Sprint
One epic, or up to three small sub-projects. Pre-seed to seed, or a single project inside a larger company.
from €5,000per statement of work · 5 to 10 days over 2 to 4 weeks
- You get
- Discovery, KPI baseline and tracking plan, PRD, prioritised backlog, dev handoff
- Terms
- 50% upfront, 50% on delivery
Fractional
Two to five epics across one or two squads. Seed to Series A, usually until the first full-time PM starts.
~€7,000per month · 2.5 days a week · 2 to 6 months, renewable
- You get
- Roadmap, rituals, specs, KPI dashboards, stakeholder updates, release management
- Terms
- Each month: 50% at the start, 50% at month end, net 15
Interim
Six or more epics, three or more squads, or a programme. Scale-ups and PM leave cover.
~€10,000per month · 4 days a week · 3 to 9 months, 3-month minimum
- You get
- Full product ownership, team leadership, metrics and reporting, hiring support, handover to your permanent PM
- Terms
- Invoiced at the end of each month, net 15
Every tier is priced from one reference day rate of €630; the longer the commitment, the lower the effective rate. All prices exclude VAT. Scopes that include custody, trading or KYC flows carry a 10% premium, since the domain knowledge is scarce and the delivery risk is higher. Invoices are in EUR; USDC or USDT settlement is available on request.
Start with one fixed-price piece
Each one is a short, fixed-price engagement in its own right: a low-risk way to see how I work before committing to a tier, or simply the one thing you need. If you continue into a Sprint or a retainer, the findings carry straight over. Each is paid 50% at the start and 50% on delivery.
Product & UX audit
Your live app, taken apart flow by flow: where users drop, what breaks, what to fix first. A written report and a prioritised list, not a slide deck.
5 days · fixed · €3,000Competitive teardown
Three to five competitors' flows walked end to end with real accounts, compared on the dimensions that matter to your roadmap, with the gaps you can win on.
3 days · fixed · €1,200PRD or spec review
A second pair of senior eyes on a document before it reaches engineering: missing states, unclear acceptance criteria, risky assumptions, in tracked comments.
Per document · from €500Not sure which tier? Count these.
This is the same check used at intake. Count each row for the work you have in mind and take the highest tier any row lands on. If it changes mid-engagement, the next statement of work re-tiers it; nothing is renegotiated in the middle of a sprint.
| Signal | Sprint | Fractional | Interim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Epics in scope | 1 | 2–5 | 6+ |
| Platforms (iOS, Android, web) | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Engineering squads to coordinate | 1 | 1–2 | 3+ |
| Third-party integrations (payments, identity, data providers, partner APIs) | 0–1 | 2–3 | 4+ |
| Sensitive flows (money movement, identity, personal data) | 0–1 | 1–2 | 3+ |
| Time | 5–10 days | 2.5 days / week | 4 days / week |
| Base fee, excl. VAT | from €5,000per SOW | ~€7,000per month | ~€10,000per month |
Acclimatise before you push.
Portfolio
A redesign, a consumer funnel, a technical platform, a payments API, a public front door and a media product. Each case study goes context, problem, approach, decision, outcome, and what I would do differently. Full write-ups on the portfolio.
- 01
Two pages answered one question. I merged them.
Managing the redesign of Yellow's Portfolio page and folding the Assets page into it: five views, fifty specced states, one place for your money.
RedesignScoping
- 02
Cutting swap failures by 40% in 90 days
Taking a wallet's swap funnel apart, betting on the right three fixes, and putting the number on an alert. Best Wallet, 35,000 MAU.
Funnel teardownKPI & alerting
- 03
Letting an AI agent trade on your exchange account
An open-source MCP server, isolated agent accounts and an onboarding a non-developer can finish. Yellow.pro, 2026.
Technical platform0→1
- 04
Crypto payments for casinos: an API operators can trust
Reconciling an integration guide with its OpenAPI contract, a production UAT, a 73-scenario stage environment, and a compliance design where the platform supplies data, not decisions. Client anonymised.
API & backendCompliance
- 05
A landing page where every claim is provable
Yellow's first public front door, plus Fees and Markets pages: positioning, copy rules and geo routing, from brief to build-ready tickets.
GrowthPositioning
- 06
The Shib: a magazine from zero to 50,000 subscribers
A media product launched inside a crypto community: a weekly edition whose cover dropped as a free NFT, 50K subscribers in under three months, and $30K a month from sponsors.
0→1Growth loopRevenue
Also shipped: Yellow's mobile redesign and onboarding epic, ShibaSwap's V2 to V3 migration (+15% TVL in under 60 days), VegaX's automated Bitcoin strategies and crypto index products (four to six launched, +20% engagement in 30 days, +150% adoption in 90 days). Full portfolio →
One person, not an agency.
I'm Joris Colleret, and Crestline Product Labs is me. Seven years in product, five of them in crypto and fintech: a consumer wallet, trading apps on web and mobile, a DEX redesign, automated Bitcoin strategies and crypto indexes at VegaX, a media product grown to 50,000 subscribers, and a deposit platform for gaming operators. Before that, digital strategy at Schneider Electric in Boston.
You work with me directly, from the scoping call to the handover. I take at most four billable days a week across all clients, which usually means one Interim client, or one Fractional plus one Sprint, so nobody gets the leftover hours.
I wireframe my own screens and hand designers clickable prototypes, not paragraphs. I would rather ship a narrow thing that works than a broad thing that is impressive, and I write the reason next to every decision so it can be reversed cheaply when I am wrong.
Based in Cyprus, working remotely with teams in Europe, Asia, North and South America; I keep overlap hours with whichever time zone the team is in. English and French. Double Master in International Management (ICN, Uppsala, Bologna). Twice winner of the Cosmoverse hackathon.
Questions people ask first
How fast can you start?
Engagements open from early 2027. From then, a Sprint can usually start within two weeks of a signed statement of work. Fractional and Interim depend on current commitments; the scoping call gives you a real date, not a "soon".
Do you set up analytics and KPIs, or only use what we have?
Both. If you already track events, I audit them against the questions the product needs answered. If you don't, I write the tracking plan, define the north-star and guardrail metrics, and spec the dashboard with your engineers. The implementation stays in your stack and your tools.
Do you work under NDA?
Yes, and I expect to. Case studies are published only with permission and with proprietary details removed or generalised. Your product knowledge base is deleted at handover unless you ask to keep it.
Remote or on site?
Remote by default, and not only in European hours. I have worked with teams in Asia, North America and South America and set fixed overlap hours with the team's time zone at the start of each engagement. On-site days for kick-offs, workshops or launches are possible and billed with travel at cost.
What if the scope grows halfway through?
It happens on most engagements. The current statement of work finishes as agreed; the new scope goes through the scope check and gets its own SOW, sometimes at a different tier. No surprise invoices.
Do you also design and code?
Yes. Design: flows, wireframes, clickable prototypes and UI in your product's own design system, and I run the design reviews. Code: working prototypes, landing pages, preview deploys, tracking events and small front-end fixes, so an idea can be clicked on a phone before it is specced. Production engineering of your core systems stays with your team; if you have none, I can introduce design and development studios I have shipped with.
Can we pay in crypto?
Invoices are issued in EUR. Settlement in USDC or USDT is available on request for the same EUR amount.
How is the contract structured?
One master services agreement per client, then one statement of work per engagement stating tier, scope, deliverables and price. Contracts describe deliverables and outcomes, not hours under direction. Professional indemnity insurance is in place.