Nesta Mission Studio
Product Lead
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Product Lead
Provender is one of the ventures we are building at Mission Studio. This is the first product and company hire, working directly with the founder and CEO, Sam McGregor, co-founder of Signature Brew, where he grew it into the largest independent brewery in London.
Provender helps growing food and drink brands get further, faster. It connects them to people who have already built and sold products like theirs, and keeps everything they learn in one place, so nothing gets lost between conversations.
The Problem: Opacity slows the innovation pipeline
The gap between a finished recipe and a production run is where new food and drink products stall. It is an information problem before it is a money problem. Manufacturers do not publish their capacity, their capability or their price, so brands are left guessing about who can make their product, and when.
The Vision: The data infrastructure layer for food manufacturing
Provender’s long-term destination is a live, structured picture of where UK manufacturing capacity sits, and when. That picture does not exist today. It is how we get more brands to market, faster, cheaper and to the right people.
The Role
We are looking for a senior product person to own the product vision and roadmap, and to build a two-sided platform for brands and experts from the ground up. You will set the product direction, not just deliver against someone else’s spec.
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What You Will Own
- Vision, strategy and roadmap for the platform, alongside Sam.
- Surfacing customer, market and commercial insights to prioritise effectively, ensuring outcomes are measurable and aligned with business strategy.
- Turning strategy into simple, buildable requirements and working directly with developers to ship.
- The build philosophy: test, learn, validate. Speed over perfection to balance ambition with deliverability.
- Setting up the product for scale and driving product-led growth.
Experience
- At least 7+ years in product leadership, ideally within software, technology or B2B environments, with a track record of delivering high-value digital products.
- Has taken a product from 0 to 1 at least twice, with evidence of exponential scaling.
- Knows the pitfalls, can stay laser focused, and has owned decisions about what to build, not just execution.
- Has worked in the start-up space and been the first product person in a team.
- Experience of working in a cross-functional team and closely with developers.
- Experience hiring, managing and developing product managers.
- Can work with a non-technical or non-product founder who is commercially driven. Not just translating vision into execution, but feeding into and shaping the path in a data-driven manner.
How You Build
- Gets hands dirty and builds scrappy, adopting Lean methodology.
- Builds for value. Balances user need against business value and knows how to hold both.
- Translates cleanly into simple requirements developers can run with.
- Familiar with no-code tools.
- Practised with core product development and management processes and tools, and knows when to use them. Spots what is too heavy and what is too light.
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Mindset
- Honest and clear communicator, confident in shaping strategy and driving execution.
- Comfortable with ambiguity. Can move the product forward and make real trade-off calls when requirements, or even the value proposition itself, are not fully settled. Clear about where “good enough for now” sits.
- An instinct for earning trust while moving fast. Provender’s brands are making real decisions about who manufactures their product and where their money goes. Treats that as a design constraint, not optional.
- Pragmatic, outcomes-focused approach.
Nice to Have
- Experience building two-sided platforms. Here that means food and drink brands on one side and industry experts on the other.
Not Required
- Deep food, drink or FMCG domain knowledge. Sam and the wider network cover that; product judgement matters more.
- Hands-on coding or engineering background. You will work closely with developers, not replace them.
Salary: Competitive
Working Basis: Close to full time, but open to discussing part time
Apply: email aaron.john@missionstudio.vc by 12/10/2026
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