About Variant Media
Product leadership built around ownership.
A single-operator practice that embeds inside your product and engineering teams — strategy, platform architecture, and shipping. Growth and analytics built in.
The Firm
A different kind of engagement.
Most consultancies run at arm's length. They take a brief, write a deck, and disappear. Variant Media works differently.
Mike sits inside your product, engineering, and leadership conversations. He learns the platform, the operational reality, and the buyer. Then he sets the strategy, writes the specs, and ships the systems that connect them.
There are no account managers, no junior staff, and no handoffs. When you engage Variant Media, you work with Mike — from the first call to the last shipped feature.
All engagements are project-based or monthly retainer. No hourly billing.
The Founder
Mike Simpson
Mike has spent a decade leading product across marketplaces, B2B SaaS, AI tools, clinical-trial workflow software, and fintech platforms. Before that: 20+ years across software, design, and growth — starting at Apple and moving through advertising operations at Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Interactive.
His inflection point was The Venue Report — a venture-backed travel marketplace where he was a founding-team member and Operations Director. He led product, platform, search, content, and analytics; the acquisition system was one part of the platform, not a separate function.
Since 2019 he's run Variant Media as a fractional product practice: CPO at Marble (B2B SaaS, AI), product leadership on DiligensHub (M&A dataroom software), Design Guide (CEU software), GetAssigned (CRM), Go Private Golf (travel platform), and clinical-trial workflow software with research teams at Michigan, Cedars-Sinai, and Northwestern.
Specialties
The Philosophy
Product is the system. Growth is one of its surfaces.
Every business has a buyer. Most have a product that almost works. The gap is usually a platform decision, a search experience, an onboarding flow, or an instrumentation problem — not a marketing campaign.
Treating product and growth as separate functions creates the disconnect that most companies live with. Product ships features; growth runs campaigns; nobody owns the system that connects them.
Variant Media operates on the seam. One operator. Product as the system. Growth, analytics, and attribution as the signal that tells you whether it's working.
How We Work
Three ways to engage.
Product-led engagements, monthly retainer or fixed-scope project. Pick the one that fits where the product is.
Fractional Product Lead
I embed with product, engineering, and leadership to own strategy, roadmap, platform architecture, and the cross-functional shipping cadence — marketplace mechanics, search, recommendations, and AI workflows included.
Product + Growth Systems
I build the connection between your product surface and your acquisition engine — search, onboarding, instrumentation, attribution, lifecycle — so the funnel runs as one system, not as disconnected campaigns.
0→1 Platform Builds
I take a workflow problem from concept to working software — technical product strategy, scoping, vendor decisions, AI integration, and the engineering collaboration to ship it.
Let's see if there's a fit.
Variant Media takes on a small number of engagements at a time. Tell Mike about the product and where it's stuck.