THE PRODUCT CHECK
Most hardware teams don't run out of money. They run out of road, building the wrong product, because they didn't make the right decisions early enough, and the gaps weren't visible from the inside.
The Product Check is a senior outside read on the alignment of strategy, product, and narrative. Two working sessions in, a short executive report out — built for founders, leadership and the investors backing them.
Not the deck, not the form. The underlying decisions about what to build, why it matters, and how it lands. Giving you confidence to commit, and a sharper version of the product to commit to.
Your design impresses, the technology works, the story sounds right, but the pieces don't line up. This is rarely a talent problem. It's structural.
A hardware product has to clear three checks before it's worth committing to: strategy, product, narrative. Each one depends on the others. Examined in isolation, each gives a confident answer. Examined together, the answers can stop lining up for investor, for customers.
That's where the decisions gets stuck. And that's how teams run out of road. Not because they made the wrong decision, but because they didn't make the right one early enough to change course. That's the decision The Product Check is built for.
If that's where you are, book a 15-minute call.
How It Works
Two working sessions. With outside perspective meeting the team's depth, and pattern recognition across technology, the category, and how people are changing. A gap between the two sessions for me to synthesise what I heard and draft the initial findings. Time for the team to sit with what's been said. Then a short report distils what was said and the recommendations built.
Read
Listening to how the team describes the product, the strategy, the story they're telling. Probing to understand the assumptions underneath, the calls that have been made, where the doubt is. Surfacing the questions the team isn't asking themselves yet — until the diagnosis has its shape, ready to take away.
Sharpen
Coming back with the initial findings. Where I had it right, where I had it wrong. Working with the team to check the assumptions, build on what's there, and shape the recommendations live in the room. By the end we've sharpened the version of the product worth committing to — ready for me to take away and write the report.
What you get
A short, executive read that gives vision-led product work credibility — bridging imagination with business clarity. Built for founders, leadership, and the investors backing them to read in one sitting.
The diagnosis.
An honest read on where strategy, product and narrative are lined up — and where they're not. What's working, what isn't, and what's being avoided.
The direction.
The sharpened version of the product worth committing to. Built from the team's depth and what's actually visible from outside.
The recommendations.
Sequenced and prioritised. What to commit to, what to test before committing, what to stop. The steps to realise the direction — not just diagnose it.
The reframe.
The way strategy, product and narrative fit together that only becomes visible from outside. The frame the team couldn't have written themselves — and the credibility it gives the work internally.
Who Runs It
Matthew Cockerill is an industrial designer and strategist with 30 years' experience shaping what comes next in hardware. He works at the earliest stages — where frontier capability is still becoming product — combining pattern recognition across emerging tech with the creative leaps that define new categories. Past work spans folding screens, smart glasses, robotics, modular devices, and autonomous systems for Samsung, Lenovo, Panasonic, Logitech, Ford, ByteDance, and Fairphone.
He's brought in by individual decision-makers — CPOs, heads of design, innovation leads — at the moment a real product call needs to be made and an outside read matters more than process. The Product Check is that work, in its most focused form. One senior advisor. No studio waiting in the wings.
A 15-minute call. No deck, no pitch.
A direct conversation about where you are, and whether an outside read on the product would be useful right now.