Project Background
Northstar is a B2B SaaS startup that sells workflow automation software to mid-market finance teams. You are the incoming program manager, and the CEO has asked you to lead a 6-week effort to clarify the company’s growth engine before the next board meeting. The goal is not to build new features yet, but to determine which questions the leadership team must answer to make a credible growth plan.
Key Stakeholders
The founder/CEO believes product-led growth is the future and wants a fast recommendation. The Head of Sales argues growth is constrained by pipeline quality and wants more budget for outbound. The Head of Product wants to prioritize activation improvements, while the CFO needs a defensible plan tied to revenue targets for the next two quarters.
Constraints
- Timeline: 6 weeks until the board meeting
- Team: 1 PM, 1 analyst, 1 product ops lead, and part-time support from Sales Ops and Finance
- Budget: $40,000 for external research or tooling
- Data limitations: attribution is incomplete, CRM hygiene is inconsistent, and self-serve funnel data only covers the last 5 months
- No headcount additions before the board meeting
Complications
- The founder has strong opinions and may anchor the discussion around one channel before evidence is reviewed.
- Sales and Product use different definitions of “qualified lead” and “activated account,” creating conflicting performance narratives.
- A major enterprise customer renewal is happening during week 4, reducing stakeholder availability.
Your Task
- Define the most important questions you would ask the founder to understand the company’s growth engine.
- Build an execution plan for how you would gather answers, align stakeholders, and resolve metric definition conflicts.
- Recommend how to prioritize growth opportunities if the data remains incomplete by week 5.
- Propose success criteria for the 6-week project and a board-ready output.
- Identify the top risks to delivering a credible recommendation on time.
