About |
Base Reality Group is the fractional product leadership practice of Dave Saunders, built on a blunt observation from 30 years of operating: the product is almost never what kills a company. Products that work in the lab die on the way to market, stalled by unclear positioning, external constraints that were never mapped to cash, go-to-market models the company cannot afford, and traction stories that investors do not fund. Those are preventable deaths, and preventing them is the entire practice.
Dave has taken more than 40 products to market as a CTO, CPO, and co-founder across telecom, cloud infrastructure, and medical devices. That record includes eight years at Galen Robotics, taking a surgical robot from Johns Hopkins prototype through FDA De Novo clearance, where the team drafted the regulatory language the agency adopted. Deep experience with regulated and safety-critical hardware is a differentiator of the practice, but the work itself is product leadership: deciding what the product actually is, sequencing the roadmap, pricing the go-to-market honestly, and building the commercial story that holds up in a boardroom.
There are three ways to work with Base Reality Group.
The one-hour working session ($500) is the front door. Founders bring a specific problem, work through it directly with Dave, and leave with a clear sense of what needs to happen next. Homework and follow-up are included.
Plan to Market is a six-week commercialization cohort for founders with a built or near-built product and no finished commercial plan. Capped at five founders per cohort, it moves through five gates, one per week: positioning and the wedge market, the commercial clock (every external constraint between the company and revenue, mapped onto timeline and cash), the go-to-market model and its real unit economics, the traction narrative investors fund, and the integrated plan-to-market roadmap. In the final week each founder presents the assembled plan and defends it under board-style questioning.
The six-month Fractional CPO engagement is the primary offering. Dave joins the team one to two days a week and runs the product function: roadmap, priorities, product and market definition, risk discipline, and the commercial story that carries the next round. The team does the work alongside him and learns the method as they go, so the structure belongs to them when the engagement ends.
Every engagement carries the same guarantee: do the work, and if the promised plan is not in hand at the end, Dave keeps working at no additional cost until it is.
Dave is also the author of Founders Who Finish, a field manual for entrepreneurs stuck between starting and finishing, and publishes The Build, a monthly printed briefing for founders, along with free Field Notes at the Base Reality Group website.
Base Reality Group works with a small number of companies at a time, by design. The work needs full attention, and the advice only stays honest when the practice is not overextended.
Learn more at https://www.baserealitygroup.com or write to dave@baserealitygroup.com.