Product leadership without the full-time CPO hire.
We own roadmap, prioritization, and customer discovery for post-PMF startups across Austria. This is the product-only slice of our combined CTPO role: we normally run product and engineering from one head, and a fractional CPO is the product side of that on its own. We do not own engineering. For the engineering side, see our Fractional CTO. Pre-PMF, or on a smaller budget than the CPO retainers, talk to us about a Fractional Co-Founder (EUR 400 per week) instead. Fixed prices on scoped work. Cancel any week on retainers. No hours tracked.
Kevin RiedlManaging Director, Operations and ProductChristof JoriManaging Director, Software
Kevin Riedl and Christof Jori. Together on every engagement.
AwardedTop 100 Young Companies in Austria. #36 in 2024, #58 in 2023 (GEWINN magazine).
Shipped75+ products, 5+ years, across 17 countries.
LanguagesDeutsch, English.
ReviewsGoogle 4.7 stars. Trustpilot 4.5 stars.
// 01
Who hires a fractional CPO
Three buyer patterns we see most often. All of them are post-PMF. If your product is still founder intuition before product-market fit, a fractional CPO is the wrong call, and we will say so on the first call.
Early-traction company, no product owner
You hit early traction and the founder is buried in sales. Product has no owner, so it drifts. We come in to own the roadmap, run a real discovery cadence, and give the team a sequence instead of a backlog of whoever shouted loudest. We do not own engineering: for that, see the Fractional CTO.
Engineering team shipping requests, not a roadmap
The team ships, but it ships whatever the loudest customer asked for last week. There is no prioritization framework and no discovery rhythm. We install both. The team keeps building while we sequence the next one to two quarters of customer interviews and roadmap calls around them.
Founder ready to delegate the product call
You have a point of view on the product but you are out of calendar to run it, and you cannot yet justify a full-time CPO salary. We scale a product function that already has a point of view. We do not invent one. If you are pre-PMF or not ready to delegate product authority, hire a Fractional Co-Founder or keep it founder-led. Outsourcing product intuition before PMF never works.
// 02
Engagement tiers and transparent pricing
Four ways to start. Each one has a clear scope and a clear cancellation policy. No hours tracked, no surprise invoices.
CPO-on-Call
Async roadmap triage, prioritization calls, discovery sanity-checks on demand.
Fixed-price engagements (Product Due Diligence, Discovery + Roadmap) are signed SoW (Werkvertrag). Wavect is legally bound on scope and deliverables. Retainers (CPO-on-Call, Embedded Fractional CPO) run as a freier Dienstvertrag and cancel weekly with no notice.
// 03
How the network model works
Three things that make this different from hiring one product consultant with one calendar.
01
You hire two founders, not one consultant.
Kevin and Christof are on every engagement. One is your product and CPO interface, the other keeps the roadmap honest against what is actually buildable. No account-manager handoff, no junior on the call after week three.
02
The bench scales when the work does.
15+ specialists we have shipped production work with. When product decisions need deep domain input (security, ML, mobile, IoT), they plug in under the Wavect SoW. One contract, one invoice. We stay accountable for the outcome.
03
You stay in control of the contract.
Werkvertrag for fixed-price work (signed scope, legally bound). freier Dienstvertrag retainer for ongoing product leadership (cancel any week). No hour tracking. No scope-creep invoices. The price you sign is the price you pay.
// 04
How we cover the DACH ground zone (and everywhere else)
Remote-first everywhere. On-site days available only in our DACH ground zone (Austria, Munich, and Zurich) as a surchargeable add-on. Christof is based in Vienna; Kevin in Tirol/Innsbruck. Between the two of us, every Austrian city plus Munich and Zurich is reachable by train without a flight, which is why on-site is offered there and nowhere else. On-site is for product workshops, discovery sessions, and stakeholder interviews. Outside that zone we work fully remote, and that is how 17 countries of clients work with us today.
Remote only. We work with clients across 17 countries. All engagements there run fully remote. On-site is not offered outside the DACH ground zone above, even at surcharge, because the travel time would dwarf the benefit.
// 05
Who is in the room
Two managing directors. Both technical. Both on every engagement.
If you're thinking about digitization of your company, tokenization, coding... you name it, I'd strongly recommend to get in touch with Kevin. His knowledge in the field is unparalleled and working with him a sheer pleasure as he is a super nice guy, strategic thinker and proactively hard worker. Thanks for your brilliant work Kev!
Jörg MayrCEO, alpha strategies
Original
LinkedIn
I got to know Kevin around 1 year ago and have been working together with him since then. His vast knowledge in tech and programming combined with his business acumen makes him the go-to person for me in regards to any tech-related topics. Regardless if it is a project in the field of blockchain, IoT, or any other software development domain, I can recommend reaching out to Kevin to benefit from his tech know-how and a business relationship based on trust and customer centricity.
Simon NoppB2B Product & Business Model Innovation
Original
Trustpilot
Excellent work. The collaboration was very pleasant and you always had the feeling of being in good and capable hands.
Eleven questions Austrian founders and boards ask before they sign. Front-loaded answers.
No. A fractional CPO owns product: roadmap, prioritization, and customer discovery. Engineering leadership (architecture, hiring engineers, vendors, production accountability) is the Fractional CTO. We run both product and engineering from one head as a combined CTPO, and a fractional CPO is the product-only slice of that. If you need the engineering side, hire the fractional CTO instead, or both.
Scope. A fractional CPO owns the roadmap, prioritization, and the customer-discovery cadence. A fractional CTO owns engineering: architecture, hiring, vendors, and production. They answer different questions: the CPO decides what to build and in what order, the CTO decides how it gets built and keeps it running. Wavect offers both, starting at EUR 2,500 per month for either on-call tier and EUR 12,000 per month embedded. Pick by the hole you have, not by the title.
Stage. A fractional CPO works post-PMF, scaling a product function that already has a point of view. A Fractional Co-Founder sits beside a founder before product-market fit, when the product is still being figured out. Pre-PMF, the founder’s intuition for the customer is the company’s single most valuable asset and cannot be outsourced to a part-time CPO. If you are pre-PMF, the co-founder model (EUR 400 per week) is the right call, not a fractional CPO. Budget points the same way: at EUR 400 per week the co-founder program sits well below the CPO retainers, so if the CPO tiers are out of reach for now, the co-founder is the honest fit, not a stripped-down CPO.
freier Dienstvertrag for the retainer tiers (CPO-on-Call, Embedded Fractional CPO), because the deliverable is ongoing product judgement rather than a fixed work product. Werkvertrag for the fixed-scope tiers (Product Due Diligence, Discovery + Roadmap), where we are legally bound on the scope and the deliverables. Both are issued by Wavect GmbH (FN 575337i, Ampass, Tirol). We can sign under your standard MSA or use ours. Austrian-law jurisdiction is the default.
Two cases. First, pre-PMF: before product-market fit, product is founder intuition, and outsourcing it to a part-time CPO never works. Second, when the founder is not actually ready to delegate the product call. If you hire a fractional CPO to avoid making product decisions yourself, you get a friction generator, not a roadmap. A part-time CPO also lags a full-timer on context, so the model breaks if decisions must be made daily off conversations the CPO was not in. It works when decisions can batch weekly and the team executes between sessions. See the honest fit in the glossary.
Yes, in those cities plus the rest of Austria and Munich and Zurich. Christof is based in Vienna; Kevin in Tirol/Innsbruck. Between the two of us, every Austrian city plus Munich and Zurich is reachable by train without a flight, which is why on-site is only offered inside that DACH ground zone. On-site is always a surchargeable add-on (travel time, train, hotel, on-site hours), not bundled into the retainer or fixed price. Use on-site for product workshops, discovery sessions, and stakeholder interviews. Day-to-day product work runs remote.
Remote only. The DACH ground zone above is where we offer on-site as a surchargeable add-on, because Christof and Kevin can reach those cities by train. Anywhere else (rest of Europe, the UK, the US, Singapore, Australia, the UAE, the rest of the world) runs fully remote: same SoW, same pricing, same two founders on every call. We do not fly for on-site work, even paid, because the travel time would dwarf the benefit and discovery and roadmap work run well from a screen.
No. We charge cash, and that is the deal. Trading consulting hours for equity creates a misaligned incentive, an awkward cap-table line, and a difficult conversation when the engagement ends. If you want a product leader with skin in the game, hire a full-time CPO. If you want a fractional operator who is unambiguously on your side because you pay the invoice, hire us. Cash, monthly, cancel any week on retainer.
Minimum on a retainer is one calendar month. We do not run trial weeks, because product context compounds and the value shows up in month two once the discovery cadence is running. Fixed-price engagements (Product Due Diligence, Discovery + Roadmap) have no minimum below the published price. Maximum is unbounded. Most Embedded CPO engagements run until the founder is ready to fund and onboard a full-time CPO. We help with that hiring panel as part of the work.
NDA is signed before the first product conversation. We use yours, or our two-page template if you do not have one. All work product (roadmaps, discovery findings, prioritization frameworks, reports) is assigned to your company on payment of the invoice, with full IP transfer and no Wavect retained rights. We do not use client work in our portfolio without written permission and we will sign a no-portfolio clause on request. Our case studies on this site are all written with client sign-off.
Our CPO-on-Call tier starts at EUR 2,500 per month, the Embedded tier at EUR 12,000 per month for 1 to 2 days a week. A full-time senior CPO in Austria costs roughly 12 to 18k per month in salary alone before equity, recruiting, and onboarding time. Fractional is not a discount full-timer: it is the right shape when you need the product authority but not the full-time presence, and when product decisions can batch weekly. A full-timer wins on context once you can justify the cost. We help you hire that person when the time comes. See CPO and CTPO for the role definitions.
Two founders. One number. Reply in four hours.
Tell us what you are building and where the product call has no owner. The first call is 30 minutes. We will tell you whether a fractional CPO is the right shape for your stage, and if it is not, we will say so.
