About Qube Catalyst

You're planning a product build, mid-build, or already live. Either way, real money is on the line and you need to know whether what's being built will work for the people who use it.

That's what I do. I use the product like a real user, look at your engagement data, and compare against patterns from 22 years shipping products at scale. Then I write a one-page plan: what is working, what is broken and the impact it has, what to fix first.

I stay involved until the key changes are delivered; before launch, during build, or after you're already live.

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The reality of funded startup product development

Most startup teams are smart and working hard. The problem is not effort. It is distance. Here is what often happens after the funding lands:

Post funding: The roadmap feels exciting. The team is shipping. Progress looks real. But the guesses about who the user is, what they need, and how they behave start to pile up quietly. Nobody has time, or permission, to stop and check them.

At scale: Features get added for the loudest users, not the typical ones. The product grows in complexity, but traction does not follow. Retention stays flat. The numbers your investors watch do not move. The honest conversation about why has not happened yet.

At the next round: Due diligence starts. Questions come about user behaviour, retention, and product market fit. Suddenly the gap between what was built and what users actually needed is very clear and very expensive.

For VCs: The portfolio company looked solid at investment. The team is good. The technology works. But the product is not getting traction and it is not obvious why. Your founders are too close to see it. You need an independent view. Not comfort, but a clear picture of what is solid and what is not.

Qube Catalyst steps in before this gap becomes a crisis. Independent, honest, with no stake in the outcome except the right one.

What Qube Catalyst actually does

We give you an honest outside read on your tech product and delivery, write down what needs to change, and stay involved until the important changes are shipped.

Most founders work with us in three steps:

1. Traction Clinic: Free 1 hour and virtual. You walk through what you are building or have built and the decisions in front of you. You leave with a one page summary you can use with your team or your board, whether or not we work together next.

2. Diagnostic: a 5 day, four lens look at your product, your users’ behaviour, your data, and your delivery. You get a plain language verdict on what is working, what is not, what to change, and in what order.

3. Oversight: a focused Sprint or ongoing independent oversight, so the right work actually ships. Scoped after the Diagnostic, never before.

Why Qube Catalyst exists

AI has made it cheaper and faster to build software. More products are shipping, with less time spent checking whether they really work for users. The bar for what makes software safe, ethical, and useful has not moved.

Qube Catalyst exists in the gap between those two facts. We are the independent quality and delivery layer between your team and your board.

We tell you what your product is actually doing, recommend what needs to change, and stay involved until the key changes are built and shipped.

The longer mission is to help at least 10,000 founders, operators, and organisations across at least three countries build technology that is safe, ethical, and genuinely useful. The work we do with individual founders is the unit of that mission.

Six values run the practice. Boldness: we say what others will not. Integrity: we tell the honest picture, always. Inclusion: better technology is built when more voices shape it. Excellence: good enough is not enough when real people use the product. Independence: we have no stake in your outcome except the right one. Humanity: technology exists to serve people, not the other way around.

How we look at your product

We do not start with your code. We start with what a real person experiences and what your data says.

1. Product walkthrough

We use your product the way your users do, end to end, on real devices, on the journeys that matter most to your business. Not just power users. Not your team. The quiet majority who try it, shrug, and leave. We write down every place we hesitate, get confused, or give up.

2. Pattern check

We compare what we see against patterns from 22 years of shipping products and from a 52,000 member operator network. Not a checklist. Real pattern recognition about what tends to hold and what tends to break when you grow.

3. Engagement and funnel data

We look at where users drop, where they stall, and where the metric you report to the board is different from the metric that actually predicts retention. We read your data the way an operator reads it, not the way a deck reads it.

4. User validation when needed

When the first three lenses leave a question we cannot answer, and only users can close it, we run focused validation. Not as a default add on. Only when the diagnosis needs it. Most engagements do not need it. The ones that do, need it badly.

We start with a written brief so everyone can see the same picture: what is working, what is broken, and what to do next, in what order. Then we stay in the seat while those changes are made, until they show up in the metrics your board and your team actually care about.

What changes when you work with us

Before, founders often describe the same feeling. The team is busy. Features are shipping. They are doing everything they were told to do. But something is not connecting. The numbers are not lying. They just do not know what the numbers are actually saying.

After, it is a different conversation. Not because everything is fixed, but because everything is visible. You know what is working. You know what is broken. You know which assumptions were wrong. You know what to change and in what order. You can have the board conversation with evidence instead of hope. You can make product decisions on what is actually true, not on instinct and crossed fingers.

One founder described it as going from “building in the dark with a really good torch” to “finally having the lights on.”

That is the shift. From hoping you are building the right thing to knowing, and knowing what to do when you are not.

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Who is behind Qube Catalyst

Qube Catalyst is led by me, Pearl Oguchi. I have spent 22 years building and shipping tech products, including 9 years at Meta London on products used by billions of people.

At Meta, I worked across engineering, product, and delivery on products under constant public and internal pressure. That is where my pattern recognition comes from not from slides, but from seeing what holds and what breaks at scale.

In 2016, after realising I was the first Black person in tech in that office, I pushed for more inclusive hiring, co founded the Disability@ employee group, and represented Meta at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa. None of that was in my job description. It came from the same instinct I bring to founders now if something is not right, you do not look away, you go towards it.

In 2020 I founded Black Women in Tech. I expected maybe twenty women to join. Today more than 52,000 members use it to share what is really happening inside tech companies every day. That gives me a live, unfiltered read on how technology decisions land on real people, not just in slide decks.

I also served five years as an elected councillor and I live with rheumatoid arthritis. Both have taught me to be precise about what matters and ruthless about what does not. That precision is what clients pay for when the stakes are high and the room is not honest enough yet.

Pearl Oguchi
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What founders say

“

Pearl spots the gaps that those of us deep inside a SaaS product simply cannot see. She looked at the product over lunch and spotted a design flaw in 8 seconds.

Founder, Kin. Time Well Spent
“

A fast, focused review that flagged critical issues. Thanks to Pearl's input, we went into testing with confidence and clarity.

Louise Orrell, Founder, Tradys for Business
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If yopu'd like to discuss your needs in more detail, complete the form below and I will be in touch within 24 hours.

FAQs

It is the layer between your team and your board that nobody else is paid to be in. Your CPO is inside the bet. They own the roadmap and they are accountable for it. Your board is outside it. They read decks once a quarter. We sit in between, weekly, in the product, with the data, with no agency to defend and no career inside your company to protect. We tell you what is actually being built against what was promised, what is working, and what is not, before it becomes the conversation you cannot avoid having.

A fractional CPO owns your roadmap and leads your product function. A consultant advises on strategy and walks away. We do neither. Your CPO is inside the bet. We are the read from outside it a different job, complementary, not competing. Unlike a consultant, we stay involved until what we recommended is built and shipped. Unlike a fractional CPO, we do not carry the roadmap. We read it honestly. The independence is structural no roadmap to defend, no career inside your company to protect, no agency model that needs your retainer to renew.

Both. Founders come to us directly when traction is missing and they want an honest independent view before their next investor conversation. VCs and accelerators bring us in to provide independent product oversight for portfolio companies either proactively as part of their support programmes, or when a specific company is not performing as expected. The engagement looks different, but the work is the same find the disconnect, name it, and map what changes.

It depends on the engagement. Most founders start with a free virtual assessment at the Traction Clinic. You walk us through what you think is going on. We tell you what we think is actually going on, and you leave with a written one page summary you can act on whether or not we work together. From there, the typical path is a 5 day Diagnostic (£4,000), and then either a focused 6 to 8 week Sprint, embedded weekly oversight, or full cycle delivery on a specific bet, scoped after the Diagnostic, never before. We will tell you honestly what we think you need, and if it is not something we do, we will say that too.

For the diagnosis, no. Our focus is on what the product actually does when a real person uses it, on your engagement data, and on how delivery is running, not on reading code. We will need access to the product, your key user journeys, your engagement and funnel data, and your honest read on what has been shipping. If the recommendation that comes out of the diagnosis requires changes to the codebase, processes, or design, the execute phase covers that, sometimes with us leading directly, sometimes with specialist support brought in under our oversight, depending on the work.

Because your product team is inside the problem. They built it, they are proud of it, and they are accountable for it. That is not a criticism. It is the nature of being close to the work. Independent oversight is not a replacement for a good product team. It is the thing that makes a good product team better, because it gives them an honest external view they cannot generate themselves. The best teams actively want it.

VerAIQ is a free self serve testing tool built specifically for non technical founders who need to assess their app without a technical background. If you are responsible for a product you did not build, whether that is an agency build, a freelancer project, or an AI assisted app, VerAIQ walks you through the key questions to ask, helps you spot gaps before they become expensive problems, and gives you the language to have more confident conversations with your developers. It is not a replacement for independent oversight. It is the place to start when you are not quite ready for that yet.