As startups grow, product teams often find themselves caught between speed and structure. In this episode of The Product Experience, Charlotte King, Lead Product Manager at eBay, shares practical insights from her work leading teams through this transition at companies including Moonpig, Flipdish, and ThoughtWorks.
Charlotte unpacks how to define product’s role during scaleup, build team structure around strategic value, and use tools like Wardley Mapping and Team Topologies to support organisational change. She also introduces the DHM model (Delightful, Hard to copy, Margin-enhancing) and discusses how to make strategy tangible for cross-functional teams. This conversation is especially useful for product leaders, heads of product, and founders navigating scale.
Chapters
1:13 – Charlotte’s background
2:36 – Product’s role in startups, scaleups and enterprises
4:35 – What product teams need to succeed during scale
6:42 – Defining product’s role as the company grows
9:00 – Using Wardley Mapping to assess team maturity
14:30 – Creating and communicating guiding principles
20:30 – Using the DHM model to prioritise value
25:48 – Structuring teams with Team Topologies
29:03 – Multidisciplinary collaboration in practice
30:41 – Lessons from leading transformation
32:30 – Final reflections and takeaways
Key takeaways
- The role of product changes with scale. Product teams need clearer structure, direction, and decision-making frameworks as companies grow beyond startup phase.
- Clarity beats chaos. Translating founder vision into a usable product strategy is essential for alignment across growing teams.
- Mapping team maturity reveals where to invest. Tools like Wardley Mapping can highlight capability gaps and areas of organisational inertia.
- The DHM model focuses strategic priorities. Every product initiative should aim to delight users, be defensible, and support commercial goals.
- Cross-functional collaboration drives better outcomes. Involving teams like sales and support early leads to stronger decision-making and more complete solutions.
- Repetition is part of change. Strategic direction and guiding principles need constant reinforcement to remain effective.
- Good structure supports autonomy. Using frameworks like Team Topologies helps teams stay aligned without becoming overly process-driven.
Featured Links: Follow Charlotte on LinkedIn | eBay | Wardley Maps | What we learned at #mtpcon London 2025′ feature by Kent McDonald and Louron Pratt
