Phase 0 · Design partner program open

Do you actually know
where your product org stands?

A 360 for your company’s product capability — from project-era basics to creator-era craft. Assess people. Diagnose the org. Transform both.

productcreator.ai turns individual product-creator assessments into an organizational diagnostic that shows CPOs where their company sits on the transformation arc — and what steps to take next.

Six founding design partner spots open. I’ll reach out personally.

01 · The problem

No tool tells a CPO where their product org actually stands. We’re building the one that does.

01
You think you’re running a product org. Can you prove it?

Most companies call themselves "product-led" because they renamed their BAs to PMs and started doing standups. The org chart says product. The operating model says project. Nobody’s measuring which one it actually is.

02
Your CPO can’t see the team they inherited.

Every CPO who walks into a new org faces the same 90-day blindness: who can actually do discovery? Who’s been doing project management with a product title? Who has genuine creator potential that’s never been developed? No tool answers this.

03
Individual assessments don’t exist. Org diagnostics are consulting theater.

HR tools measure engagement, not capability. PM tools measure output, not competence. Consulting firms charge six figures for a maturity assessment that’s outdated before the slide deck is finished. Nobody’s building a real-time, bottom-up view.

04
The transformation has no instrument panel.

Moving from project to product to creators is a multi-year journey. Most orgs have no way to measure progress, no way to show the board what’s changed, and no way to know if the investment in people is actually working. They’re flying the transformation blind.

02 · Transformation

Resources Teams Creators.

The role of a person on a product team has transformed twice in twenty years — and is transforming again. The name keeps changing. The question underneath doesn’t: what can this specific human actually do?

  1. 012000s
    Resources
    Project model

    “How many FTEs do we need for this project?”

    People were interchangeable units of capacity — headcount, allocations, hours on a plan. Success meant delivery. Whether the thing worked was somebody else’s problem.

  2. 022010s →
    Teams
    Product model

    “Who owns this outcome?”

    Cagan and SVPG drilled in the product model over a decade: empowered cross-functional teams, continuous discovery, outcomes over output. People stopped being filled seats and started being owners of problems. A huge chunk of the industry absorbed the vocabulary. Fewer absorbed the model.

  3. 032024 →
    Creators
    Product creator era

    “Who can actually shape product?”

    Generative AI put capability in everyone’s hands, so team structure alone no longer decides what ships. The zoom goes back to individuals — but not as resources. As specific humans whose product sense, competencies, and craft can be evidenced. In Cagan’s framing, creators can do the work. Everyone else is exposed.

    We are here

This arc isn’t just a story — it’s the diagnostic framework. productcreator.ai assesses your people across these three stages and shows you where your org actually sits. Not where the org chart says. Not where the slide deck claims. Where the evidence points.

I spent nine years running product through exactly this arc — from the project-era tail end into product-model maturity, the last four as CPO. productcreator.ai is the instrument panel I needed through that transformation, and the one every CPO driving the next one deserves.

03 · Credit where it’s due

The era of the product creator framing comes from Marty Cagan and Bob Baxley’s essay at SVPG. If the arc above resonates, their piece is the source — go read the original.

Read Cagan & Baxley
04 · The approach

Assess people.
Diagnose the org.

Individual assessments are the raw material. Aggregated, they become an organizational 360 — showing where your company sits on the project → product → creator arc, where the gaps are, and what transformation steps to take next.

For individuals · free

The self-assessment.

Where do you sit on the product creator spectrum? Assess yourself across the dimensions that matter — discovery, problem shaping, scope judgment, outcome thinking, technical craft. Get a personal profile. Share it with colleagues. Track your growth over time. Free forever.

  • Personal profile
  • Peer assessments
  • Growth tracking
  • Shareable
For CPOs · the 360

The org diagnostic.

Individual assessments aggregate into a company-level 360 of your product organization’s capability — diagnosing the org as a whole, not evaluating individuals. Where on the arc is your organization — project, product, or creator? Where are the capability gaps? What transformation steps come next? Tracked over time with deltas so you can prove progress to your board.

  • Org-level 360
  • Arc positioning
  • Gap analysis
  • Transformation roadmap
  • Time-series
  • Board-ready
Future layers — shaped by design partners
  1. Direction
    • Vision
    • Principles
    • Strategy
  2. Outcomes
    • Outcome tracking
    • Progress
    • Outcome roadmap
  3. Signal
    • Customer interviews
    • Discovery
    • Feedback loops
05 · Design partners

Six founding spots. Shape the manager tier.

Design partners shape the org diagnostic — the 360, the transformation roadmap, the board-ready reporting — while v0.1 is still malleable. I’m taking six CPOs or VPs of Product into the founding cohort. Choosy about who takes the spots.

  • Reserved
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Logos appear once design partners approve public listing.

  • Shape the org diagnostic — the 360, the transformation roadmap, the board-ready reports
  • Whole-team rollout of the self-assessment first, before it opens to the public
  • A standing channel to me, with a feedback loop measured in hours
  • Founding pricing locked in for life once we open general access
Apply for a spot
Talk to Jirka.
06 · Who’s building this

I’m Jirka Helmich. I spent nine years at Mews, the last four as Chief Product Officer, working through the hypergrowth years of one of Europe’s fastest-growing product companies.

Since then, I’ve been assessing product talent and advising companies on their transformations — from project-era orgs trying to build a real product function to product-model companies leveling up into the creator era. Dozens of assessments, dozens of transformation roadmaps. An SVPG practitioner by necessity first, and by belief now.

productcreator.ai is the instrument panel I wished I had through all of it. I’m building it because spreadsheets and slide decks don’t scale — and neither does doing this work by hand. Based in Prague.

Research

The Product Creator Playbook — 31 competencies across 3 layers that define what it means to build products in the creator era.

Free to read, share, and reference. Attribution appreciated.

Read the playbook

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