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Recruiting a 1st Product after Serie A

Coaching

Recruiting a 1st Product after Serie A

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Maxime Barbier

CEO at Timeleft

Less than a month to recruit my Head of Product

  • Structuring the product team and defining key profiles
  • Selecting the best candidates for entry
  • Participation in technical interviews (peer assessment)
  • Validation of recruitment conditions

<1

month to recruit the right person

Taille de l'équipe
1-20

"Stellar's ability to challenge my intuitions with concrete data saved me an incredible amount of time and avoided costly recruitment mistakes."

Maxime Barbier

CEO at Timeleft

L'équipe

Stellar and Timeleft work together to select the right product team.

In this assignment, Matthieu Pozza, CPO at Stellar, supported Maxime Barbier, CEO of Timeleft, in structuring his Product organization and recruiting his 1st Head or Product. The objective: to define the right recruitment process and select the right candidates to select the best profile in the shortest possible time.

Maxime Barbier
CEO at Timeleft
Photo de Mathieu de Spendesk
Matthieu
CPO
Matthieu
CPO in residence

Mission

Timeleft has set itself a mission: to combat loneliness by creating dinners between strangers. Launched by Maxime Barbier, the scale-up has already attracted over 1.5M participants and 2M subscribers. Its model: single tickets (€15) or subscriptions (€20/month) entitle participants to weekly dinners. In 2024, Timeleft secured a €7M Series A round led by an American VC, while 50% of its business is already generated in the US.

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How Stellar supported Timeleft

Audit

Successful strategic recruitment and a growth-oriented organization

Stellar's support enabled Timeleft to define its Product organization and secure the recruitment of its Head of Product in a context of hypergrowth.

  • Product organization strengthened: key profiles recruited and governance clarified.
  • Better prioritized roadmap: product decisions now guided by data rather than impulse.
  • Candidate evaluation: an objective process using skills grids and a precise benchmark.
  • Product role clarified: no longer a search for the five-legged sheep, but a definition of needs aligned with business objectives.
Challenge

From problem to solution: How Timeleft overcame its challenges

Timeleft aced a number of challenges that hampered its growth and development. Here's how Stellar helped them overcome these obstacles to accelerate their growth and achieve their goals.

#1 A fragile product organization

The departure of the VP Product and the presence of junior profiles left a strategic vacuum. The roadmap was steered by the CEO, resulting in unclear prioritization and overstretched teams.

Steering Structured products

Stellar has introduced structured product governance, clarifying responsibilities between the CEO and the product team.

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#2 Candidates evaluated by feel

With no evaluation criteria or framework, Product recruitment relied too much on intuition, leading to casting errors.

Structured assessment process

Stellar has structured the recruitment process with skills grids and a clear case study to select the best profiles.

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#3 Recruiting by default

Without a clear vision, the urgency of hypergrowth led to the recruitment of available rather than suitable profiles.

Clear definition of product role and business priorities

Definition of priority skills for the role that have an impact on the business: Delivery, Design, Leadership...

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Results

Tangible results:
Towards a high-performance product organization

01
Effectiveness > Theory
We don't deliver PowerPoint decks. We deliver actionable diagnostics, decisions made, teams unblocked. If a recommendation can't be implemented within 30 days, we don't make it.
02
Structured product team
A dedicated team, led by a Product Director, now enables strategy and priorities to be orchestrated centrally. Better collaboration and sharing of best practices, with real decompartmentalization of teams.
03
Clarity of roadmaps
A dedicated team, led by a Product Director, now enables strategy and priorities to be orchestrated centrally. Better collaboration and sharing of best practices, with real decompartmentalization of teams.
04
+10% growth maintained
Deployments are now possible across the entire customer base, marking a turning point in the standardization of the platform.