Best product growth specialists - September 2026

Alongside David Spiegel, Hila Qu, Nicholas Heim, Andrew Capland, Leah Tharin, and Alex Allan cover different needs, including PLG experimentation, self-serve monetization, and interim product leadership.

The best fit depends on who will do the work. A founder who needs someone to own a checkout redesign has a different brief from a growth leader who wants a second opinion on the experiment roadmap. This guide makes that distinction explicit, with a focused selection of people whose public services address growth inside the product.

For a wider comparison, see our growth product consultants directory.

How we selected these specialists

We looked for a public consulting or advisory offer, relevant product experience, and a clear connection to activation, retention, conversion, or monetization. The September 2026 selection includes individual practitioners who can own delivery or work closely with the team responsible for it. We distinguish those engagement models below.

Company experience and service descriptions come from the specialists’ own sites. Reported results belong to those accounts; they are not forecasts for a new engagement. Our fit recommendations are editorial judgments about the kind of problem each person is equipped to address.

Compare the specialists

David Spiegel: product growth that carries through to execution

David Spiegel connects product growth with the behavior behind it: what people are trying to accomplish, how they understand an experience, and what makes them continue. He studied psychology at NYU with a focus on human cognition. That interest in behavior and intent informs work across conversion, onboarding, and retention, carried through UX, analytics, and implementation. David Spiegel’s background.

His reported work includes helping MD Exam, a brand of 5 Axis Health, grow its patient base from 10,000 to 50,000 while redesigning intake, onboarding, pricing, product selection, and checkout. In a different setting, he helped Chargerless quadruple monthly sales after the first month of working together. These examples make him relevant to teams that need growth work to connect customer behavior with changes they can release. Public portfolio; career background and outcomes.

Consider Spiegel when you need someone to investigate a funnel, prioritize the changes, and help get them out the door. In the first conversation, bring one customer journey and agree how much of the research, design, measurement, and delivery he will own.

Hila Qu: turning PLG into a repeatable experiment program

Hila Qu’s advisory practice covers activation, retention, pricing, product-qualified leads, and growth-team development. She describes a working process that starts with discovery, narrows to one or two growth opportunities, and proceeds through analysis and experiments. Her operating background includes growth leadership at GitLab and Acorns.

Qu is a strong fit when a team has enough product usage to investigate but lacks a clear method for deciding what to try next. Her public offer includes hands-on advisory and interim VP Growth work, so discuss which relationship your company needs before comparing proposals.

A useful opening brief would be: identify why a defined customer segment stalls before first value, agree the activation measure, and help the team run the next experiments. Clarify who implements the product changes and who maintains the measurement after the engagement.

Nicholas Heim: self-serve monetization with an option to build

Nicholas Heim, founder of Purpose Labs, explicitly separates advising from embedding: in the latter model, he joins the team’s tools and operating routines to ship alongside it. His services include PLG execution, pricing and packaging, and growth-team design. His site describes earlier growth roles at BioRender, Hotjar, and Sprout Social.

He is worth considering when the free product, upgrade path, and pricing model need to be designed together. His stated focus is companies ranging from pre-revenue to roughly $50 million ARR, with a self-serve motion or plans to establish one.

Bring the current plan limits and a few real upgrade journeys to the discussion. Ask which changes he would implement directly, how he would evaluate the pricing tradeoffs, and what your team would need to own. That makes his two engagement options easier to compare.

Andrew Capland: practical PLG advice for a team already shipping

Andrew Capland’s Delivering Value has a specific team advisory offer. He helps SaaS teams work through onboarding, upgrade paths, product-qualified leads, and the balance between self-service and sales. His background includes leading growth at Wistia and Postscript.

Capland describes his preferred clients as high-volume SaaS businesses starting around $8 million to $10 million ARR. The published arrangement includes two monthly meetings and asynchronous review time. It is an option for an existing team that wants sharper decisions and feedback on its work.

Consider him when your growth PM, designer, and engineers can execute but need help diagnosing an activation plateau or reviewing a new upgrade path. Share the current roadmap and ask how the advisory work would change it. Agree who turns the recommendations into specifications and releases.

Leah Tharin: B2B growth leadership across product and sales

Leah Tharin works on B2B product-led growth, product-led sales, and hybrid motions. Her service page makes a useful distinction: growth advisory works with company leadership, while embedded leadership includes responsibility for building and running the function.

That difference matters when a company has friction between self-serve adoption and its sales process. A product team can improve activation while sales continues to use qualification criteria that miss the newly activated accounts. Tharin’s cross-functional growth remit makes that kind of problem a relevant brief.

Her embedded offer is a substantial executive engagement with a defined handover, aimed at larger B2B businesses. Ask whether the need is a new growth operating model, an interim leader, or a narrower product project. Establish the remit before discussing a timeline; each calls for a different commitment.

Alex Allan: product leadership when delivery needs a business direction

Alex Allan of Digital North works through fractional CPO engagements and scoped projects. His services include conversion and growth work, subscription health, and connecting product decisions to retention and revenue. His portfolio describes leadership roles at Urban Sports Club, Lingoda, and GotPhoto, alongside conversion work at Clue.

Allan is a relevant option when the growth constraint includes how the product team operates. The brief might combine a conversion problem with unclear priorities, missing leadership, or a need to hire a permanent product lead. His remit is broader than managing a single experiment backlog.

Before hiring, decide whether the first deliverable should be a focused growth assessment or ongoing product leadership. Ask for an explicit split between management responsibilities and direct work on the customer journey. That prevents a narrow optimization project from expanding without a clear decision.

How to hire for the growth problem you actually have

Start with a sentence that names a behavior: new accounts sign up but never invite a colleague, trial users reach value but do not upgrade, or customers leave after their first purchase. Add the affected segment and the evidence you have. A concrete brief makes specialist comparisons much more useful.

Then settle ownership. An advisor can improve a team’s judgment, but product changes still need design, engineering, and reliable measurement. If those resources are missing, discuss an embedded operator or a fractional growth product manager. Ask the proposal to name the work each side owns.

Choose a first project small enough to evaluate. It should produce a diagnosis, a prioritized intervention, and a way to assess the result. A higher signup rate is only useful if those users can reach value; a higher checkout conversion rate can conceal a worse refund rate. Agree the downstream checks before shipping.

Finally, request a relevant work walkthrough. Ask what the specialist changed, what the team contributed, and what remained uncertain. That conversation tells you more about how someone operates than an isolated percentage lift.

Sources

• David Spiegel: services and selected work.
• David Spiegel: career background and selected outcomes.
• Hila Qu: growth advisory, process, and operating background.
• Nicholas Heim: Purpose Labs services and experience.
• Andrew Capland: product-led growth advising for SaaS teams.
• Leah Tharin: advisory and embedded leadership options.
• Alex Allan: Digital North services and selected work.