Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Product Management

Decoding Product Leadership Titles

18 Mar 2025

What companies call their top product hire is a big clue to the company stage, the role’s scope, and the relationship with the CEO or founders. Here’s a decoder for what you’re getting into for different head of product titles.

Director of Product / Product Manager: Often the first product hire. Regardless of title, the role is an IC to execute the founder’s vision. They triage bugs, prioritize for engineers, and handle inbound feature requests. Product vision and strategy remains with the founder. This role often fails due to mismatched expectations.

Head of Product: Somewhere on the spectrum between a Director of Product and a VP of Product. This role might be exactly how I describe the Director role, might be really a VP role. Often is a blend of both. Sometimes used when the company is unsure of which title to give because they think they can’t get the right people using a Director title and aren’t ready to hand out VP titles.

VP of Product: Owns and scales the product. There’s one dominant prroduct that has product-market-fit, and perhaps a second smaller product, add on, or incubating product idea. The company vision is the same as the product vision, so the CEO is setting the broad vision overall. The VP of Product handles TAM expansion, processes, hiring, and detailed product strategy. The founder or CEO does oversight to keep the product aligned with their vision and runs any big transformational bets.

CPO: Focuses on scaling the product function and creating the conditions for product success. Not a lot of direct product work, the CPO isn’t building products. The CPO defines the broad portfolio strategy: which markets to enter and where to invest. They set up methods for measuring and improving the product organization and make sure it’s well aligned with the company goals.

TL;DR: The top product hire’s scope by title

  • Director: Tactical work to execute founder’s vision
  • Head Of: maybe Director, maybe VP
  • VP: owns the product in a single-product company
  • CPO: Doesn’t build product; functional exec creating conditions for product success

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