Turnarounds
Two turnarounds, two kinds of business
Restarted delivery and secured enterprise customers at Wilbur, with CPS234 compliance and ISO 27001 certification. Turned around a SaaS product with more than $19M in ARR at MRI Software.
Product · Technology · AI · Execution
Helping good companies get unstuck.
I’m Mark Cohen. I’ve led product and technology organisations as CTO, CIO and VP Product, helping businesses scale, transform and regain momentum.
I work at the intersection of product strategy, engineering leadership and commercial execution, from the boardroom to the architecture review.
MARK COHEN
What I do
Leading product and technology through change.
I can lead the whole function, whether the organisation calls the role CPO, CTO or CPTO. The same experience goes into transformation work and advisory engagements.
Executive leadership
Executive Leadership
CPO, CTO and CPTO leadership across product, technology and engineering, for organisations that need one accountable leader for the whole function.
Explore my experience
SaaS Transformation
Simplifying complexity, improving execution and restoring delivery momentum.
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AI Transformation
Turning AI opportunities into products, workflows and measurable business outcomes.
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Advisory & Fractional Leadership
Supporting CEOs and boards through specific challenges and periods of change.
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Product and engineering transformation Selected work Writing
Evidence, not titles
A career spent making change real.
Different companies, different markets, and underneath them the same recurring job: find what is actually blocking delivery, then stay long enough to be accountable for the result.
Transformation
Changed the economics of product delivery
Reshaped product and engineering operations across APAC at MRI Software, improving delivery capability while saving $6.2M over three years.
Scale
Built organisations for the next stage
Grew Domain’s technology organisation from 48 to 230 people and led the technology elements of the separation that supported its ASX listing.
Commercial outcomes
Turned product change into business growth
Led digital subscription products at Fairfax that created more than $60M in incremental annual subscription revenue in the first two years.
Acquisitions
Helped bring an ASX-listed company into MRI
Initiated MRI Software’s acquisition of PropTech Group (ASX:PTG), a publicly announced deal valued at about A$93.4M, and led the onboarding. MRI’s Australian Sales CRM share went from roughly 8% to roughly 45%.
Selected work
What transformation looks like in practice.
Six situations where the brief was not to observe from the sidelines.
Insurtech turnaround
Turning around Wilbur, a claims technology business
Product delivery restarted, enterprise customers were secured and commercial momentum returned. Wilbur achieved CPS234 compliance and ISO 27001 certification.
Read the story
SaaS turnaround
Turning around a $19M+ ARR SaaS product at MRI Software
The turnaround of a SaaS product with more than $19M in ARR.
Read the story
How I think
Execution over theatre.
Strategy matters. It only becomes valuable when it changes decisions, behaviour and what reaches the customer.
01
Start with the constraint, not the org chart.
02
Make fewer promises, then keep them.
03
Treat APIs as business capabilities, not plumbing.
04
Use AI to change the work, not decorate the roadmap.
05
Build capability that remains after I leave.
ByteJam
I still build.
ByteJam is my product studio: the place where I build software, experiment with AI and test ideas against real users. It keeps my executive work grounded in the reality of making things.
See what I am building →build();
learn();
repeat();
Ways to work together
The shape follows the problem.
Sometimes the right role is a sounding board for a founder who has nobody else to test the decision on. Other times it means stepping into the work and owning part of it. These are common starting points, not packaged services.
Executive advisor
Advice on product and technology decisions for a CEO, founder or leadership team. I help with the decision and someone else carries it out.
Fractional CPTO
Direct responsibility for product and technology leadership over a defined period, so the organisation is not left waiting for a permanent appointment.
Transformation leadership
Leading one specific change, such as a platform consolidation, an operating model reset or an acquisition integration, from diagnosis through delivery.
Board advisor and speaking
An independent view for boards and investors on technology spend, execution risk and AI opportunity, plus talks for audiences working through the same questions.
Let’s talk
Get in touch.
A little context about the business and the challenge is a good place to start.