Meet the Service: Bridging Product Strategy and Execution for Growing Startups
Fishburners
Building a better world through a culture of entrepreneurship & the largest early-stage startup community in Australia.
Welcome to another edition of our Meet the Service! This month, we are thrilled to introduce you to Mandar Karlekar, the Founder and CEO of Product Rocket. With over a decade of experience in product management and design, Mandar has been pivotal in elevating product maturity for more than 50 clients across various domains in Australia, including industry leaders like Qantas and Buildbee.
In our conversation, Mandar shares his journey from his early days at Amadeus and SiteMinder to founding Product Rocket—a consultancy dedicated to helping businesses navigate product challenges and achieve market success. He delves into the unique services Product Rocket offers, such as transforming product problems into customer-validated solutions within four weeks and providing execution support to build MVPs for market launch. Additionally, Mandar provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of product management and design, offering advice for startups aiming to scale their product capabilities effectively.
Join us as we explore the strategies, experiences, and wisdom that Mandar brings to the table, helping businesses unlock their full product potential.
Mandar is currently advising a startup in AI, bringing his expertise to help them navigate the exciting opportunities that new technology and AI present. He is thrilled by what the company has ahead in this transformative era.
Hello Mandar, it’s great to have you with us today. To kick things off, I’d love to know a little bit about you and can you tell us the story about the journey that led you to start Product Rocket?
After working extensively in the startup ecosystem and leading product teams at various high-growth companies, I realised there was a gap in the market: something between the typical contractor, who is focused on day-to-day execution, and the management consultant, who is more about high-level strategy and chasing big-dollar projects. My experience with startups showed me the need for someone who could bring both the versatility and speed required in early-stage environments along with the strategic insight to guide teams through complexity.
What businesses really needed was someone who could combine the versatility and speed of a contractor with the expertise and thought leadership of a management consultant. Many founders struggle with issues like misaligned teams, difficulties in scaling processes, and the constant pressure to deliver results without losing sight of the strategic vision. They needed someone who could provide the theory, onboard quickly, uplift team maturity, and still execute effectively—bridging the gap between strategy and hands-on implementation. Delivering tangible results was about solving these pain points, ensuring teams were not just working hard, but working on the right things in the right way.
That’s what led me to create Product Rocket. We saw an opportunity to fill this gap in product management and UX design. A model that brings the best of both worlds to the table. Our team steps in as practitioners, providing both strategic guidance and hands-on execution, ensuring teams don’t just learn the theory but also experience its impact in practice.
Product is a relatively new industry and often one that is unfamiliar to first-time tech founders and teams. Can you walk us through what a Product Manager does and how this role can greatly contribute to the success of a tech startup?
A Product Manager acts as the bridge between a product’s vision and its execution, ensuring the team builds the right product for the right users. For tech startups, this role is crucial because it involves understanding customer needs, defining a clear value proposition, and iterating quickly based on user feedback. A good Product Manager helps founders translate their vision into actionable plans, aligning the team around core priorities and ensuring that resources are invested in features and experiences that truly drive value.
For instance, a common challenge for early stage founders is managing the influx of feature requests from early users, which can quickly lead to scope creep and misallocated resources. Here, a skilled Product Manager brings critical expertise—conducting user research, analysing data, and implementing prioritisation frameworks to focus on features that drive the most value. By setting clear KPIs and aligning the team around a strategic roadmap, they ensure development efforts remain on course, enabling the founder to concentrate on broader business growth, operational scaling, and stakeholder alignment. With this level of support, product development not only stays user-centred but directly supports the company’s long-term objectives.