Chief Product Officer search for African fintech
TITC runs retained CPO and product leadership searches for fintech across Africa. For founders ready to hand product to someone they actually trust.
The hire that keeps going wrong
You were the product. The vision, the roadmap, the calls. Handing that over is the hardest letting-go in the business, and it's why most CPO hires either get neutered or get rejected.
The wrong hire is the consumer-app product leader who's never shipped under a regulator. Brilliant on growth and conversion, lost the moment KYC friction, affordability rules or settlement timing constrains the roadmap. They treat compliance as the enemy. In fintech that's fatal.
The other failure is the feature factory. A product org that ships constantly and moves no real metric, because nobody owns outcomes over output.
What good looks like
Someone who ships fast but inside the lines. Who partners with risk and compliance instead of fighting them. Who builds a product organisation, not just a backlog. And who earns the founder's trust without needing to be managed. In African markets, that includes real fluency in local payment methods, USSD as well as app, and building for more than one country.
How we run it
We screen hard for product leaders who've delivered under regulatory constraint and who can work alongside a founder who built the first version. Chemistry with the founder is assessed, not assumed.
Common questions
When should a fintech founder hire a CPO?
When product decisions outgrow the founder's bandwidth, or when the roadmap needs to balance growth against compliance, fraud and risk in ways one person can't hold. Often alongside or just after a scale raise.
Why do product leaders from outside fintech struggle?
Fintech product is constrained by rails, licensing and risk. A leader who's only shipped unconstrained consumer products often stalls when regulation, not the user, sets the limits.
Can the founder stay involved in product after hiring a CPO?
Usually, and the best CPOs make space for it. We assess for that working relationship up front, so the founder hands over without being shut out.
Discuss a mandate
Ready to hand over product? Tell us what you're holding on to and why.