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Melanie Coogan

Sydney · Product decisions for complex, high-stakes work.

Senior product partnership for high‑stakes builds.

Twelve years leading product decisions, from small startups to global giants like Atlassian. That range taught me what founders need: some want a second opinion, others want someone in the room making the call. I do both.

Sectors
  • Banking & fintech
  • NDIS marketplaces
  • Ecommerce
  • SaaS
Stages
  • Startup
  • Scale-up
  • Enterprise
Book a 30-minute discovery call (opens in a new tab)See how I work

Product & accessibility work with

  • Atlassian
  • CommBank
  • Tyro
  • Woolworths
  • Mable
  • Remarkable

Whatever stage you're at, I can help.

Racing to a pilot.

Small team, maybe vibe-coding, maybe working with a dev agency, trying to get something in front of real users before the runway runs out. You need a fast, focused read on what to build first and what you can skip.

See Pilot Launchpad

Past the pilot, drowning in feedback.

You've raised, you've launched and now every user, every advisor and every well-meaning friend has an opinion. You need someone to turn that noise into a roadmap an investor will actually believe.

See Short engagement

Scaling past what one founder can manage.

You've got product-market fit and multiple squads, and you need to stay in the strategic view instead of getting pulled into process detail like accessibility and product development. You need senior judgement in the room without hiring it full-time.

See Fractional support

Who this is for and who it isn't for.

Who this is for

  • Every decision's being made on instinct, because there's no one in the room who's done this at scale before, especially in regulated or high-stakes spaces
  • You've got traction but not the experience to prioritise what's next or you're about to face investors and want your product story pressure-tested by someone who's built that case for executives before

Who this isn't for

  • You want someone to execute a list of features you've already decided on, not help shape it
  • You want a fixed playbook applied as-is, without adapting it to your product, your users and what's actually going on

Real outcomes on products that matter.

  • $1M/week in deposits

    Fintech product & GTM, Tyro

    Pioneered a first-to-market Xero payroll integration, adding $1M a week in deposit balances. Go-to-market skills trace back to an earlier marketing career with brands like Audi, Coca-Cola and Nintendo.

  • 10% adoption, month one

    0 to 1 product launch, Mable

    Built and launched a fintech payment product from scratch. 10% of the worker base adopted in the first month, scaling to 7,000 workers within the year.

  • 26 teams

    Accessibility at Atlassian

    Embedded accessibility directly into how 26 Jira teams built and shipped, hitting the target 12 months ahead of schedule. It wasn't a compliance checklist. It meant real people could actually use the product.

What I actually do.

  • I work alongside founders and teams, acting as a sounding board when you want to make the call or stepping in to make it with you.
  • Years working alongside engineering teams means I can question costs and effort to make the hard trade-off decisions. I've met founders who've watched agency costs blow out. I'd rather help you avoid that.
  • I'll help you get an honest, fast read on where things stand. Whether that means confirming something's ready to market or scale - or showing you exactly what to fix first.
  • AI can give you a framework. It can't give you judgement. That takes years of actually making these calls, in regulated spaces, under pressure.

What founders say about working together.

She opened with 'see the person, not the limitation,' and that framing stayed with me through the whole program. Her frameworks, desirability, feasibility, viability, and testing risky assumptions before building, are the ones I keep coming back to. Highly recommend Mel to any founder who wants to learn how to build products with users, not just for them.

Amanda Chen

Founder, Remarkable Launcher Disability Tech Pre-Accelerator

Read full quote on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)
No matter how deep we got into strategy, Mel made sure to keep the conversation focused on what mattered most for the person we were building for: their independence, their dignity, and the real problem in their life, not just the product or the technology. Any founder would be lucky to have her in their corner.

Kevin Grosu

Founder, Pranox (AppGenie)

Read full quote on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)

Not sure?

If you're not sure whether this is the right kind of help for where you're at, that's a completely normal place to be. Send me a message at melanie.coogan@gmail.com and we'll work out together whether it's a fit.