I talk about how to scale a product organisation without scaling the theatre, what is left for the craft when AI removes the delivery bottleneck, and how to hire builders rather than bureaucrats. Rooms listen because it is built from running the job — and from writing it down.
15 YRS / STAGES / WRITING
What actually breaks between 10 and 150 people. The operating model that worked at seed becomes the tax at scale. How to grow the organisation without growing the theatre that buries the craft, and where ceremony is still worth the cost.
When AI removes the delivery bottleneck, what is left for product management. The job has always belonged to whoever holds the current bottleneck. Delivery is no longer it. Judgement is. Taste, scars and intuition are the residual — and they are not a prompt.
Why frameworks ate the craft, and how to hire and run a team that does not need them. An argument from the stage and from the job: product management drifted into process, and the teams that still ship are the ones that treat methodology as optional and evidence as not.
The masterclass version. How to make ready-to-ship prototypes the default, turn opinions into evidence before the roadmap hardens, and keep a team honest about what actually moved a customer. Built for rooms that have to go back to work on Monday.
Dan Dalton is a product executive with 15 years across product, design and product marketing. He is Director of Product at Sage, running a £150m HR and payroll portfolio. He scales organisations without the theatrics — and speaks and writes about the craft that remains when the ceremony is stripped out.
Dan Dalton is a product executive with 15 years across product, design and product marketing. At Sage he runs a £150m HR and payroll portfolio across the UK and North America, leads the company’s partnership with Anthropic, and took free-to-paid conversion on the small-business package from 4% to 22%. Two businesses where he built the product function were acquired — Flock by Admiral, Pento by HiBob. At Pendo he created Listen, launched the first AI line, and grew Feedback from $1m to $5m in 18 months at 129% net revenue retention. He writes on skills, agents and the job of product, and speaks at Mind the Product, Product World, The Product Experience and Product-Led Alliance. He travels from Newcastle upon Tyne.
