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Rachel Kroft
Fractional CPO/CDO for start-ups | Venture Fellow | Investing in Parent Founders | Adjunct Professor in Strategic Management
Rachel Kroft is the Principal & Owner of Happy Warriors, a product and design consultancy, specializing in early-stage startups, products, and teams. Her consultancy focuses on taking products from inception to launch, excelling in areas such as product development, product research, go-to-market strategies, and design.
Most Recent Work: • Pricing research & validation for new product line • Vision & Value Prop Workshop(s) and plan for determining future of core product • General customer discovery and validation - generative research, value prop testing, market segmentation, and broader market research • Establish CRM and future customer pipeline for marketing and sales Initial GTM plan. • UX design and working with both the founders and engineering on product definition and tactical feature work • Start-up & Venture Fund Pitch decks • Building business cases to validate product investments • Hiring first engineers to assess how they work with product & design • Training execs and/or teams in how to conduct customer validation and basic product development
In addition to her consultancy work, Rachel currently teaches a course on team formation, collaboration techniques, and leadership at Parsons New School within the Strategic Management Bachelor's program. Before establishing her practice, Rachel primarily worked in startups as well as in large to mid-size consultancies leading teams and clients through ideation to launch, hiring, and establishing best practices. In these roles, she served a diverse array of sectors including government, healthcare, finance, sports, automotive, retail, and more. She also ran an education program focused on federal procurement officers in teaching them how to purchase software and understand software teams.
Currently, Rachel is embarking on a new initiative: the creation of a fund aimed at supporting parent founders and fam-tech. She is in the early stages of defining the fund's thesis and operating model and is a Venture Fellow at Material Change Institute.
Quick note: happy to connect with people I don't know, but please drop a message saying what you're looking for or why you want to connect.
