What this Deliverable is
Certius Labs is a complete product package I created to solve a real operations problem for micro-VCs: slow, inconsistent, and non-reproducible diligence. This is not a marketing concept — the deliverable is an execution-ready product artifact set: a 9-slide deck (market research, two product teardowns, PRD summary) plus a detailed PRD that contains schema definitions, API contracts, connector plans, acceptance criteria, and a 12-week pilot plan. Recruiters and hiring managers will find exactly what they need: strategic framing, measurable hypotheses, engineering scope, pilot economics, and the go/no-go success gates they expect from a senior product lead.
Context & Problem
Micro-VCs screen an order of magnitude more deals than traditional funds (hundreds of decks/year). Current workflows are manual: analysts pull metrics from decks, LinkedIn, GitHub, and cap-table sources into ad-hoc Docs/Sheets.
Consequences: long Time-to-First-Memo (TTFM ≈ 4 hours), patchy memo completeness (≈62% include critical fields), and duplicated analyst effort (modeled at 2,100 hours/year for a small fund). The business pain is real and quantifiable.
My Approach
Research & validation
Conducted structured interviews and compiled a 15-firm appendix (behavioral evidence for time lost and tool fragmentation).
Competitive teardowns: Affinity (relationship CRM) and Carta (cap-table system) — identified explicit integration points and gaps.
Product Design & Specification
Built an enforceable canonical memo schema (required vs recommended fields) and a canonical JSON export for CRM ingestion.
Defined deck ingestion pipeline (PDF parsing targets: <120s p90) and public connectors (LinkedIn public profiles, GitHub public repos, Crunchbase).
Designed a re-run engine with evidence logs and diffs (target refresh <30s) and a conservative red-flag rule bank (7 initial rules).
Engineering Readiness
Delivered an engineering-grade PRD: data models (Postgres JSONB examples), API endpoints, acceptance criteria, performance SLOs, and a prioritized roadmap for 12-week pilot execution.
Included staffing and budget estimates (4.75 FTEs for 12 weeks ≈ $150k fully loaded) and infrastructure cost assumptions.
Tools & Artifacts Produced
9-slide public deck (market slides, two product teardowns, PRD slide) — designed for investor and partner pitches.
Full PRD: canonical schema, connector contracts, re-run evidence model, rule engine, pilot plan, and success gates.
Pilot economics model (pricing, ARR proof point, break-even analysis).
Outcomes
Ready-to-ship engineering scope: The PRD gives an engineering team everything needed for a scoping sprint (API contracts, data model, SLOs, test cases).
Measurable hypotheses & gating: TTFM reduction (4.0 → 2.0 hrs target), memo completeness (>90% target), connector reliability targets — these are clear KPIs for early success measurement.
Commercial proof points: Pilot pricing and ARR math—10 pilots at $299/mo ≈ $36k ARR; break-even with 3 paying customers at proposed unit economics.
Recruiter signal: Demonstrates product leadership across research, competitive analysis, detailed PRD execution and GTM planning — ideal for product roles that require end-to-end ownership.
How to read the artifacts if you’re short on time
Start with slide 1–3 (market): quick proof the problem exists and its economics.
Slide 4–6 (teardowns): identifies exactly where to integrate (Affinity, Carta).
Slide 7–9 + PRD: shows the product solution, acceptance criteria and pilot plan — what to build first and how to measure success.
