Product Strategy in Kharkiv, Ukraine

Product Strategy in Kharkiv — from discovery to product-market fit

Product strategy is not a vision-statement document that sits in Notion and nobody opens. For a startup or growing SaaS in Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region, it’s a working tool that answers the question every week: “what are we building next sprint and why this specifically”. Without a strategy, the team scatters across features that “seem needed”, burns out on work without visible results, and spends investor money (or the founder’s personal savings) on functions real users don’t want. I’m Alex Filiuk, Senior UI/UX designer and product strategist with 15+ years of experience, working on product strategies for Ukrainian and international teams since the 2010s. My portfolio includes 40+ products driven from discovery to launch, including a number of startups from Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region that have entered the national and international markets.

This page brings together everything a founder, product manager or CTO should know before commissioning product strategy work in Kharkiv: what the process looks like, how discovery differs from “brainstorms in a meeting room”, how the JTBD, RICE/ICE, HEART and AARRR frameworks work, which key mistakes Kharkiv startups make, and why it pays off to engage a strategist who deeply understands the local IT ecosystem rather than a random Bay-Area agency that has never heard of your city.

Why product strategy is critical for businesses in Kharkiv

Kharkiv is a city of 240,000+ residents with a unique IT ecosystem: there is a strong outsourcing segment (local companies serving American and European clients), and a growing pool of in-house product teams building SaaS, mobile apps, fintech products and B2B tools. Kharkiv startups have an important specifics — they almost always go to the national or international market from day one, because the local city market is too small for a typical SaaS product.

This creates a particular challenge: the strategy has to be both pragmatically local (taking into account resources realistically available to a Kharkiv team — a smaller pool of senior talent, less local access to angel investment, a limited investor network in the city) and ambitiously global (because the product will be sold to clients in Kyiv, Berlin or San Francisco). It requires a separate approach, different from “copying Kyiv startups” or “copying Silicon Valley”.

Product strategy for a Kharkiv startup serves three key functions:

• Focus. A team of 5–10 people in Kharkiv can’t do “everything” — you need to know exactly which audience segment you’re attacking, which problem you’re solving, which hypotheses you’re testing this quarter. Without focus — scattering.
• Hypothesis speed. A startup wins not by “doing it better”, but by faster validating / falsifying more hypotheses. Strategy is a decision-making system that lets you move fast.
• Chance of product-market fit before runway runs out. Most startup failures aren’t “the product is bad”, but “money ran out before PMF was found”. Strategy maximises the chance of finding PMF in limited time.

What full product strategy includes

There’s no “universal” product strategy — each startup needs its own depth and emphasis. Before starting, we agree with the team which of the following blocks are critical for your product and which can wait.

• Discovery and customer development. 8–15 problem interviews with real users, synthesis into a JTBD map, validation / falsification of initial hypotheses. Without this, all downstream work is guessing.
• Segmentation and ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). Whom we are attacking first and whom — later. The ICP must be specific: not “small business”, but “owner of a dental clinic in cities of 100k+, with 5–15 employees, who already has a CRM but isn’t happy with it”.
• Positioning and value proposition. The single sentence that explains why a user should pick you over a competitor. The classic April Dunford framework or the “JTBD value proposition canvas”.
• MVP scope. The minimum set of functions that validates the most important hypothesis. One core flow, zero extras. A realistic launch term — 6–10 weeks.
• Product roadmap for 6–12 months. Epics and features split by quarter, with transparent RICE/ICE prioritisation.
• Metrics. What we monitor — AARRR funnel, HEART UX-quality metrics, north-star metric. How we set up tracking — Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog, GA4.
• Hypotheses backlog. A list of 10–20 hypotheses with priority and experimental design (how exactly we will test each).

If you’re also planning UI/UX design, a mobile app, or full development in parallel — strategy comes first, because everything downstream is built on it. Design without strategy is drawing pretty screens at random.

How the process looks — step by step

I work via a transparent process all my product clients have gone through. Each stage has fixed deliverables — you see weekly progress, no “black boxes” for a month.

1. Week 1. Kickoff and initial hypotheses. A workshop with founders and key stakeholders (4–6 hours, ideally in person in Kharkiv). We capture what the team already knows about the market, hypotheses about ICP, pains, solutions. We draft a discussion guide for discovery interviews.
2. Weeks 1–2. Recruitment and interviews. We find 8–15 respondents — among existing users, potential audience, or “warm contacts” from your network. I run interviews personally, in “problem-interview” format following Steve Blank / Rob Fitzpatrick methodology.
3. Week 3. Synthesis. Transcripts, tagging, clustering of needs, JTBD map, outcome statements, validated / falsified hypotheses. Output — a 15–25 page document with real user quotes.
4. Week 4. Segmentation and positioning. We draft the ICP, formulate the value proposition, analyse competitive landscape (who are the competitors in Kharkiv, in Ukraine, globally, what makes us different).
5. Week 5. MVP scope and roadmap. We define the core flow for MVP, build the feature backlog, prioritise by RICE/ICE, draft the 6–12 month roadmap.
6. Week 6. Metrics and final presentation. We set up the tracking plan (which events to log, which metrics to monitor), finalise the strategy doc, present it to the team and investors.

The total cycle is 4–6 weeks, depending on depth. If you’re at the idea stage — a discovery sprint can compress to 2 weeks. If a fractional CPO format is needed — after the strategy I stay with the team for 3–6 months, regularly join sprint planning and retros.

How much does product strategy cost in Kharkiv

The price comes from the scope of work, not from geography — residents of Kharkiv, Kyiv or Berlin get the same rates for the same packages. Approximate ranges (exact figures are in the “Pricing” block above):

• Discovery sprint (basic). 2 weeks of work: 8–10 user interviews, JTBD map, initial hypotheses, recommendations. Suitable for teams at the idea stage or for validating a new vertical.
• Full strategy (standard). 4–6 weeks: discovery + segmentation + positioning + MVP scope + 6–12 month product roadmap + metrics + tracking plan. The most popular choice among Kharkiv startups.
• Strategy + ongoing support (premium). Strategy + 3–6 months working with the team as a fractional CPO. I plug into sprint plannings, retros, run regular strategy syncs, coach the in-house PM.

Worth a separate note: if you order strategy together with UI/UX design, mobile app design or SaaS development — the combined package costs less than the sum of individual services. Savings for you and more efficient work for me (one context, one logic, no knowledge transfer between contractors).

Common mistakes by Kharkiv startups — and how to avoid them

Over 15+ years of work with product teams I’ve seen dozens of cases where startups in Kharkiv (and across Ukraine) spent months and hundreds of thousands of UAH on work that didn’t need to be done at all. Here are the key mistakes:

• “Build the MVP, then think.” The most common and most expensive mistake. The team writes code for 6–9 months, then discovers users don’t need it. Discovery in the first 2 weeks saves these 6–9 months.
• “Asked 3 friends — that’s customer development.” No. Customer development is structured problem interviews with users belonging to your ICP, not the founder’s friends who will say “great idea, will totally use it”.
• “Stuff every feature into the MVP, otherwise users won’t buy.” The paradox: the fewer functions in the MVP, the faster you validate the hypothesis and the better you understand which features are actually needed. “All inclusive” = “nothing clear”.
• Persona docs without JTBD. “Our user is Iryna, 32, from Kharkiv, loves yoga, works in IT.” It’s pretty but useless. JTBD gives much more: “when Iryna kicks off a new project on the weekend, she wants to set up the team quickly so she doesn’t lose Monday on onboarding”.
• “We’ll add metrics later.” A classic disaster. The MVP launches without analytics, then nobody can say what works and what doesn’t. The tracking plan must be ready BEFORE launch, not after.
• Copying Western startup strategies without adaptation. “Slack did it this way, Notion did it this way — we’ll do the same”. The context in Kharkiv is different: different competition, different resources, different growth speed, different users. The strategy must be your own.
• Roadmap without OKRs and metrics. Roadmap = “build feature X in Q2”. That’s not a roadmap, that’s a task list. A real roadmap is “in Q2 we increase retention by 20% via X, Y, Z”.

Modern product-strategy approaches 2025–2026

Product management is evolving. Here are the approaches I bake in for Kharkiv teams:

• Continuous discovery. Discovery is not a one-off event but a weekly process. At least 1 user interview per week, every PM holds a “discovery cadence”. Teresa Torres’ approach.
• Outcome-driven roadmap. Instead of “build features A, B, C” — “achieve outcome X via hypotheses A, B, C”. This makes the team more agile and focused on results.
• Opportunity solution tree. Visualisation of the link between metrics — opportunities — solutions — experiments. Helps the team see the holistic picture and prioritise.
• JTBD as the basis for value proposition. Instead of personas — job stories and outcome statements. Simpler, sharper, more actionable.
• Product-led growth. Instead of “let’s launch a powerful sales team” — “let’s build a product that brings in new users by itself through onboarding, freemium, virality”. An approach that works well for Kharkiv SaaS startups with limited marketing budget.
• AI-augmented product workflows. Using LLMs for interview synthesis, feedback analysis, hypothesis generation. Not replacing the PM, but augmenting them.

Cases: product strategy for Kharkiv and Ukrainian startups

My portfolio includes 130+ projects, of which ~40 are full work at the intersection of product strategy and UI/UX design. Among them — both indie product launches by Kharkiv founders and clients from Kyiv, Lviv, the US and Europe. This lets me see how the product approach works in different contexts — and how to adapt best practices to the realities of a particular team.

If you want concrete examples — go to the “Projects” section or get in touch via the contact form. I’ll pick 5–10 most relevant cases for your vertical (B2B SaaS, marketplace, mobile app, fintech, healthtech) and show not just final products but the working process — discovery docs, JTBD maps, RICE tables, roadmaps. This will give you a realistic picture of what the work will look like in your case.

What you receive after the strategy project

• Discovery report 15–25 pages: user quotes, JTBD map, need clusters, validated / falsified hypotheses.
• ICP document: a detailed description of the ideal customer with firmographics, pain points, channels, buying triggers.
• Positioning statement + value proposition canvas + competitive landscape.
• MVP scope document: description of the core flow, MUST/NICE-to-have feature list, technical assumptions, time estimate.
• Product roadmap for 6–12 months in Notion or Airtable, with RICE prioritisation and per-quarter outcomes.
• Tracking plan: a list of events to log, AARRR/HEART metrics, a configured dashboard in Mixpanel/Amplitude/PostHog.
• Hypotheses backlog for 10–20 experiments with priority and experimental design.
• Post-project support: 60 days for questions, minor changes, technical consultations free of charge.

My other services for product teams in Kharkiv

Strategy is the start of the journey. If you’re building a serious product, a complex approach is worth considering:

• UI/UX design — the web-product interface that executes the strategy via specific screens.
• Mobile app design — for iOS and Android, with platform guidelines in mind.
• Web development and mobile development — full implementation cycle.
• CRM / ERP / SaaS — complex B2B products.
• UX audit — for existing products, where you need to find leaks in the funnel.
• Conversion optimization — A/B tests, landing and onboarding optimisation.
• Business consulting — positioning, pricing, go-to-market.
• Branding — so that the product has a coherent visual identity, starting from the logo.

Product strategy in other Ukrainian cities

I work not only with Kharkiv teams. If you have a distributed team (some in Kharkiv, some in Kyiv, some in the US) — that’s often even better for the strategic process, because there are more perspectives. Among other locations I actively work with:

• Kyiv — the largest concentration of startups and investors
• Lviv — creative and IT product teams
• Odesa — e-commerce and fintech
• Dnipro — B2B and industrial-tech
• Kharkiv — deep IT expertise, edtech

The full list of locations is on the “Service Areas” page.

Ready to discuss product strategy for your startup in Kharkiv?

If you have a specific request — fill in the contact form or write to email/Telegram (contacts in the website footer). The first consultation is free, up to 60 minutes long. We’ll discuss your startup, current product stage, key challenges, an approximate budget and timeline. After that I’ll send a detailed proposal with a fixed price — no surprises and no hidden fees.

I’m ready to build for your product in Kharkiv a strategy that doesn’t just “sit in Notion”, but works every day for focus, speed and product-market fit. Not “another document”, but a working product-management tool.