Advisory

When it is useful to bring me in.

I work with teams that know something is wrong but do not yet agree on what. These are the situations where my experience actually applies — organised by the problem, not by a list of deliverables.

Situations

Each of these is somewhere I have done the work, not a service I decided to offer. I have also advised more than 100 startups on product strategy, validation, monetization and go-to-market.

Growth has stalled and nobody agrees where the real constraint is

The team has a backlog of plausible explanations and no way to choose between them. The first job is to find which constraint actually binds, and to make that legible to everyone.

Outcome

The pattern behind the Ray and HyperSpace cases.

Monetization needs restructuring

Pricing, packaging and the conversion path were built for an earlier stage of the business and are now holding it back.

Outcome

Ray: in Poland, purchase conversion ~12× and ARPU ~5× year over year. Rambler: search revenue +95% YoY.

An AI demo needs to become a reliable product

The demo works and the product does not. Usually the gap is grounding, failure modes, evaluation and trust — not model choice.

Outcome

Stabilising HyperSpace's multi-model AI product; building GatoK AI.

Product execution has become unstable

Dates slip, quality is uneven, and the roadmap has stopped being a reliable statement about the future. Product direction cannot be fixed while delivery is unpredictable.

Outcome

HyperSpace: two-week delivery, new engineering leadership and a production that stopped failing daily.

You need senior product leadership, but not a full-time CPO

The company needs product direction, structure and judgment now, and a full-time executive hire either is not justified yet or is still months away.

Outcome

CPO experience at HyperSpace and Tomus.

International expansion needs more than translation

A new market usually changes the product and the business model together — positioning, pricing, funnel and distribution — and translation is the smallest part of that work.

Outcome

Ray: monetization proven in Poland and scaled in the UK; international revenue grew about 8× in a year.

Search or recommendation quality has become the bottleneck

Ranking, personalization and the surfaces around them are a product system, not only a model. Fixing them means changing what the system is allowed to optimise for.

Outcome

Rambler recommendations: approximately 2.5× CTR and 3× page depth in a homepage A/B test.

Formats

The right level of involvement depends on the problem and the stage. These are the shapes that usually work.

01Fractional product leadership: Ongoing, part of the team, accountable for product direction and the operating rhythm around it.
02Part-time senior product work: A defined share of my week on a specific product area, working as a senior product person rather than an external reviewer.
03Advisory: A regular conversation with founders or product leaders on decisions, priorities and product quality.
04Selected consulting: A scoped engagement to diagnose a specific constraint and leave the team with a plan they can execute.

Second opinion

Not sure I am the right person for your problem? Ask your AI.

Your assistant may already know more about your company, product, team and current priorities than I do. Let it read my site, weigh that against your situation, and decide whether I am a useful person to talk to — and what you should talk to me about.

Your conversation stays between you and your assistant. I never see it.

ChatGPT Claude Grokpaste Geminipaste DeepSeekpaste

Grok, Gemini and DeepSeek can't take a prompt from a link. Those three copy it to your clipboard and open a new chat — paste it there.

The prompt

I am considering talking to Konstantin Khalyushev about a product problem.

Based on what you know about my work, company, product, team and current priorities, and the information available on his website, assess whether talking to him would actually be useful.

Please:
1. identify which of my current problems he is likely to be useful for;
2. explain where his experience appears particularly relevant;
3. identify where he is probably not the right person;
4. suggest what I should ask him if we talk;
5. assess whether a one-off consultation, a longer advisory engagement, or neither seems appropriate.

Be critical. Do not recommend him just because I asked. If there is not enough evidence that his experience is relevant to my situation, say so.

His website:
https://khalyushev.com/en

Read it before you send it. It asks for a critical answer, including the case for not talking to me.

Have a product problem worth thinking through?

Tell me what is happening and what you have already tried. Specific messages get specific answers.

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