You built the team. Nobody built the operating layer.
The missing piece is rarely talent or effort. It's the work that falls between roles, so nobody owns it. I take it on, inside the team.
I join early-stage companies as a hands-on product and operations lead: six weeks to start, then month to month until there's a permanent owner, and I help you hire them. I build product myself, so I know what breaks between a decision and a shipped feature.
A new process is the easy part. What decides whether it holds is whether people move with it, so I'm in the room while the team adopts it.
Organizations I've worked with
Selected work
Four companies where I did this work, each written up with the evidence so you can check it.
Roadmap, June 2022
Vaulta · 2022–2025
Founding product manager for a protocol's move to independence.
Organizational design · Technical product leadership
Jenius Bank · 2021–2022
Product leadership inside a new bank while it hired its own team.
Product leadership · Regulated product design
Voice · 2019–2021
Launched a blockchain social network, then led its pivot to NFTs.
Product strategy · Team design
Ozmo · 2016–2019
A new interaction model for Verizon's business desk phones.
Product discovery · Interaction design
In their words
Stephen came into Vaulta during a fundamental shift: the decision to move from funding ecosystem development to building the product ourselves. We were moving into new territory.
That meant building the product, program, and engineering processes from scratch: how to define ownership, gather inputs from across the organization, sequence priorities, and create a delivery model that could actually ship. He built all of that while we were already in motion. No drama, no friction, just clarity and forward motion.
Ted Cahall
Former CVP, Microsoft · 4x COO
On working together at Vaulta. Read the case study
Who you'd work with
I'm Stephen Diesel. I've run product at a protocol foundation and a new digital bank, helped launch a social network, and I build product myself. Outside that, I do neuroscience research, teach yoga and produce live music.
About meTwo ways this usually starts.
For founder-led teams
Someone to run it with you.
I take on product and operations alongside your team and stay through the hard decisions, until someone permanent owns them.
Product and operations get built while you're building the company.
For investment funds
Your portfolio companies have the team. They're missing the operating layer.
Portfolio support is built to be horizontal: one person covering thirty companies can advise, but can't embed.
I come in through a fund introduction and contract with the portfolio company directly.
Tell me what's stuck.I'll tell you if I can help.
Book a call