Cracking Product-Market Fit.
As first Chief Growth Officer, the mandate was to find product-market fit and turn it into explosive growth. That meant identifying the underserved developer segment, engineering a landmark infrastructure partnership, and building the freemium funnel that would become the company's core business model.
Challenge
Chainstack was operating in a narrow enterprise segment with long sales cycles and a limited addressable market. The infrastructure was technically excellent and commercially under-activated. The task was to find the audience that would actually pull the product through the door, and build the engine to reach them at scale.
What I did
The first step was re-segmenting the market. A large, underserved developer segment was already trying to do what Chainstack's infrastructure could do better, faster, and more reliably. The product was ready. The positioning, pricing, and go-to-market were not.
A landmark partnership unlocked distribution: free RPC endpoint access in exchange for co-marketing and integration depth. That free tier became the acquisition funnel for the paid platform. Developers arrived for the free offer and stayed for the performance and reliability.
The growth engine was built around this funnel: developer marketing, technical content, community programs, and conversion infrastructure designed to turn high-intent free users into paying customers. The model compounded month over month.
Outcome
Core model
The freemium funnel became the business model still powering the company today
PMF found
Re-segmented the market and locked in product-market fit inside the new audience
Explosive growth
Adoption and revenue compounded month over month through the freemium engine
Category shift
Moved Chainstack from a narrow enterprise niche into a category leadership position