Sejla Vatres

Commercial-first product and growth.

More revenue, better margins. From finding them to building them.

Ten seconds in and no AI buzzwords? We're past that. AI is a given. The numbers are the point.

Built and grew products used by millions of people, and by companies like

What I believe

Great experiences, engaged users, happy customers: all important, none the goal. They matter because they drive revenue, and when you lose sight of that, you build things people like but nobody pays for.

Diagnose. Innovate. Lead.

Four ways in. Each one starts with the numbers.

  • Revenue that's stuck, margins that are thin, or a digital investment nobody can explain the return on. A focused look across your customers, product, pricing, and operations to find the few things that will actually move the numbers.

    What gets looked at

    • Where customers drop off before they pay
    • Pricing, packaging, and what customers would pay more for
    • Why customers leave, and why some stay and grow
    • Where manual work and cost to serve are eating your margin
    • Whether your product team is building what matters

    What you walk away with

    A short list of what to change, what each change is worth, and who needs to own it. Not an 80-slide deck.

    Sounds familiar?

    • We keep shipping features, but the numbers barely move.
    • We've spent a lot on digital and can't explain the return.
    • Revenue is growing. Profit isn't.
    • Customers say they love us. They still don't renew.
    • Is it the product, the pricing, or the execution? We honestly don't know.
  • Your team is busy running today's business. The Lab takes on the commercial problems that keep getting pushed to next quarter, and works on them until the numbers move.

    What it takes on

    • Getting customers to use more of what they already pay for
    • Reconnecting sales, product, and operations where handoffs break down
    • Bringing AI into how your teams actually work, not just into slide decks
    • Finding and testing new sources of revenue
    • Taking cost and manual effort out of how you serve customers

    How it works

    1. Pick the problem
    2. find the root cause
    3. test fixes
    4. implement what works

    Every step ends with a decision: scale it, change it, or stop. Nothing survives on enthusiasm alone.

    What you walk away with

    Problems solved and measured, plus a team that knows how to keep it going.

    Sounds familiar?

    • People sign up, then barely use the app.
    • Sales promises one thing, product builds another.
    • Everyone talks about AI. Nobody's actually using it.
    • We have ideas. Nobody has time for them.
    • Where does our next revenue come from?
  • Some companies haven’t started. Some have the tools but not the adoption. Some want AI at the core of how they work. Each needs something different, and the work starts where you are.

    1. Getting started

      For companies that haven’t really used AI yet.

      Find the first use cases worth doing, get quick wins live, and give teams the confidence to go further.

    2. Getting it used

      For companies with tools and pilots, but low adoption.

      Turn scattered experiments into everyday habits: the right use cases, embedded in real workflows, with numbers that show what they’re worth.

    3. Going all in

      For companies that want to become AI-native.

      Redesign workflows, roles, and how products get built, with AI as the default rather than an add-on.

    What you walk away with

    AI working in your business, teams that use it without being chased, and clear evidence of what it’s worth.

    Sounds familiar?

    • Everyone agrees AI matters. Nobody knows where to start.
    • We bought the AI tools. Nobody’s using them.
    • We ran a pilot. It never left the pilot.
    • A few people use AI brilliantly. The rest of the company doesn’t.
    • We’re adding AI to things. We’re not changing how we work.
  • Senior ownership of product and growth, part-time, against commercial goals agreed upfront.

    • If you have a team: sharper priorities, better discovery, and work tied to adoption, retention, revenue, and margin.
    • If you're building one: what to hire first, how to structure the team, and how it should work, with a clean handover when it's time for a permanent leader.

    Sounds familiar?

    • We need a CPO. We're not ready to hire one.
    • We have a product team, but the founders still make every product call.
    • We're building a product function and don't know who to hire first.
    • We know what needs to change. We need someone to lead it.

Smaller ways to start

Not ready for a bigger engagement? Start here.

  • Founder Advisory

    A sharp second opinion for the decisions that shape the business.

    Regular sessions, or a one-off conversation when a big decision is on the table. Problems get framed properly, assumptions challenged, and options weighed against what each will cost and what it's worth.

    You keep ownership of execution. Advisory is for decisions; for someone to lead the work, see Fractional Leadership.

  • Strategy Workshops

    Focused sessions that end in a decision, not a photo of a whiteboard.

    Every workshop starts with one clear business question and ends with an agreed answer: what to prioritise, what to test, or what to launch. Evidence comes into the room, assumptions are made explicit, and trade-offs get settled.

What commercial-first looks like

  • A large travel scale-up had the right strategy but couldn't get the business moving together. The work cut across too many functions for any one team to own.

    Brought product, operations, and commercial teams into one squad, and led the launch of an entirely new capability, from the customer-facing experience to the processes behind it.

    Real new value for customers, and $2M in new revenue within six months.

  • A digital health platform suspected there was more value in what it had already built, but not where.

    Ran workshops across internal teams, combined them with user research and usage data, and uncovered a gap no one was serving: a new module, built on existing capabilities, that gave users something genuinely useful for their health.

    The module brought in $100K in enterprise sales in its first month and lifted app usage across the board.

  • When the pandemic froze its core market, an enterprise software company needed a new way to grow, fast.

    Researched the business, its users, and the market, and found the answer already in the building: turn the platform into a self-service tier anyone could sign up for and use, without a sales process or an enterprise contract.

    The platform reached a customer segment it had never served, and revenue grew 10%.

Previously at

Let's move your numbers.