When building fast
demands better product decisions
Arbor works alongside early-stage SaaS teams to align on what matters, and ship with conviction.
Let's Talk
✉️ hello@arborproductsolutions.com
How Arbor Works
Arbor is a principal-led product practice.
The work is focused on helping teams make clearer decisions, create stronger feedback loops, and establish operating rhythms that increase speed as complexity grows.
Arbor is often brought in at moments where product must evolve — standing up a new team, expanding into a new surface area of the product, or realizing that customer feedback, roadmap decisions, and execution can no longer live in scattered tools and informal conversations.
In these moments, product can’t stay purely intuitive — but it also can’t slow down. Arbor helps teams get oriented quickly, align on what matters, and put just enough structure in place to reduce drag, cut through noise, and keep shipping as the company scales.
Arbor Product Solutions is led by Evan Michner, a product leader with 20 years of experience building and evolving SaaS products — from early product-market fit through scale and reinvention.
Evan has worked as a Product leader with founders and engineering-led teams at companies like FullStory, Atlassian, LaunchNotes, and H-E-B, often during moments where ambition outpaced product structure.
Clients work directly with Evan on problem framing, synthesis, and decisions. Execution and systems work are layered in thoughtfully when it increases leverage, speed, and focus.
The Arbor Model
Arbor engagements are designed around three layers:
Product judgment
Framing the right problems, making tradeoffs explicit, and helping leaders decide what matters most. This work is always led by Arbor’s principal.
Product execution
Discovery, interviews, analysis, shipping MVP code, roadmap shaping, and hands-on support — delivered through focused, time-boxed workstreams.
Product systems
Feedback loops, tooling, rituals, and lightweight operating models that help teams move faster with less friction.
Engagement options
ONGOING
Retained Product Leadership
Arbor partners closely with companies where there is no existing product function to strengthen decision-making, align priorities, and execute. This work often spans strategy, discovery, roadmap shaping, operating cadence, and team enablement — adapting as the company grows.
Retained partnerships and fractional engagements are intentionally limited.
TIME SENSITIVE
Project Engagement: First Product Leader
We partner directly with your recruiting team (or can recommend trusted product recruiters) to design and hire the first product leader when there is no existing product function.
  • Research and understand exactly what your org needs
  • Define the role, job description, and success criteria
  • Design the interview flow and scorecards
  • Run interview sessions, facilitate working session, or run candidate screenings
FIXED SCOPE
Project Engagement: Clarity Sprint
Clarity Sprints are fixed-scope engagements designed to bring conviction to important product decisions. Examples: ICP clarity, pricing decisions, stalled roadmap bets, or conflicting customer signals.
These sprints are 1–4 weeks and combine discovery, synthesis, and clear recommendations.
FIXED SCOPE
Project Engagement: Product Operations & Systems
As teams grow, product friction often shows up as scattered signals and coordination cost: customer feedback spread across tools, unclear ownership, and teams shipping without shared context.
These engagements often include designing customer feedback and insight loops across internal functions, establishing customer research rhythms, defining product rituals, dashboards, and decision hygiene
Every engagement begins with a short conversation to understand your team, your product, and where better product decisions will matter most next.
If there’s mutual fit, Arbor designs a focused way to move forward and brings the right support in at the right time.
Interested? ✉️ hello@arborproductsolutions.com
Proof
"Evan has an uncanny ability to understand people and guide them toward clarity. Evan didn’t just push his perspective — he made me believe it. A masterclass in product development. Whatever your problem, let Evan help you figure it out."
Emil Ivov, Founder
"Evan has a remarkable ability to distill complexity into clarity, consistently zeroing in on what truly matters…He balances strategic vision with practical execution, setting our product direction through customer-centric thinking and pragmatic decision-making. His calm demeanor and deescalating approach were invaluable in difficult situations."
Salvatore Sodano, Engineering Leader
"Evan is that rare product management unicorn at the crossroads of engineering, product, and marketing, blending all three to turn complexity into clarity and vision into reality. His crisp communication style, exceptional drive, and insatiable curiosity make him an unstoppable force in delivering products that matter."
Jake Brereton, Founder