Erick Watson speaking at Consensus 2025

Erick K. Watson


Fractional CPO & Venture Partner for AI Labs, Studios & Protocols I embed with your core team for 6–12 months to turn research-grade tech into ecosystems, revenue, and investable narratives.

Explore how I partner with labs > See SproutVest


For Venture Studios, Labs & Protocols

What labs and protocols hire me to do:

🔑 Turn research artifacts into products

  • Clarify problem/solution for non-technical stakeholders
  • Define product lines and roadmaps around core primitives (randomness, privacy, ZK, etc.)

🎯 Design commercialization & ecosystem strategy

  • Token and pricing models aligned with adoption
  • Partner and ecosystem plays (dev tooling, integrations, grants)

💼 Act as embedded product leadership

  • Participate in leadership meetings, not just “advisory calls”
  • Drive prioritization, experimentation, and launch cycles with the team

💵 Engagement model

Embedded venture partner / fractional CPO for 6–12 months (1–3 days/week)

  • Limited to 2–3 parallel engagements to preserve depth of execution

  • Optionally paired with a SproutVest squad (design, PMM, GTM ops) when you need a small team, not just an individual