I started working with Subterranean because their business plan, written twelve months before I joined, described the kind of support they knew they were missing: someone to help shape the technology into products the market could understand and adopt. They called it business development, by which they meant everything that wasn’t engineering.
The Company
Subterranean builds software for unmanned vehicles — drones and robots — operating in communications-constrained and hazardous environments, such as underground sewers and tunnels. Based in Donegal, Ireland, they have seven full-time employees and are steadily growing.
Since their technology was already being deployed in the field with a live customer, the need was proven. The commercial layer to scale beyond it had not yet been built.
Engineering decisions were shaped by what the current customer needed rather than a clear product strategy.
The Goal
The engagement was scoped to three months. In that time, I needed to determine whether a viable market existed for the technology, forge a credible path toward it, and give the engineering team enough direction to know what to build next. The question was not just commercial. It was whether the company had the foundations to grow beyond a single customer, and if so, what that growth should look like.
What I Did
At the start
I spent the first part of the engagement embedded deeply within the company — speaking with every member of the team individually, spending time with the founders onsite and in operational environments, and repeatedly asking “why” until I understood not just what the technology did, but why it mattered.
Much of the early work focused on translating technical capability into product direction: identifying which problems were commercially valuable, which parts of the technology could scale into products, who those products were for, and how to communicate value outside highly technical conversations.
From that work came the foundation for the website, product narratives, sales assets, and partnership discussions. It also changed how the company talked about itself internally, not just to the outside world.
Once the products were launched
I started introducing structure internally — less about adding processes for its own sake, more about giving the team an intuitive way to make intentional decisions — one that worked with how the team already operated. I approached this by doing 3 things:
1. Focusing on value, not features
I reorganised work around themes (or ‘epics’) linked to value being realised, rather than isolated feature requests. This made it easier to prioritise work internally. Externally, it also changed how progress could be communicated, because delivery was now grouped around meaningful outcomes rather than disconnected engineering tasks.
2. Formalising discovery work
I deliberately separated discovery from delivery-ready implementation so uncertainty became visible earlier. Roadmaps, product direction, and design thinking were established upfront, which reduced the amount of unresolved thinking being absorbed by engineering during implementation.
3. Working within existing tools and habits
I worked within the tools and habits the team already used. Instead of introducing additional platforms such as Jira, I built the workflow directly inside GitHub Projects and introduced a GitHub/Slack integration so customer feedback and feature requests could flow naturally into a backlog for later refinement and prioritisation.
“We weren’t sure whether what we’d built could work beyond our first customer. Working with Chris helped us understand who else could benefit, what it would take to reach them, and how to explain it clearly. He brought enough structure to give the team clarity on what to build and why, without getting in the way of how we worked. We still move quickly, but with much more confidence that we are building the right things.”
— Aidan Gallagher, Co-Founder & CTO, Subterranean
Outcomes
The assumption going in was that the technology had value beyond its first customer. Within three months there was evidence to support it.
The company had secured an R&D grant through government channels. Being able to frame the business clearly — articulating the roadmap and opportunity in a way that funders could follow — was part of what made it possible. That framing had not existed before. For founders preparing to raise, this is often where the gap shows up first.
Partnership conversations are underway, and the company is now in a position to build a repeatable sales pipeline. More importantly, the foundations of a product-led company are now in place.
The changes were both operational and cultural:
- Product discussions shifted from technical feasibility alone toward user value and commercial viability
- Engineers began pushing back on release cadence discussions until real users were involved
- Discovery and validation became part of the development process, rather than something considered afterwards
- The company developed clearer ways to communicate value externally
- Product thinking became embedded enough that decisions no longer depended on me being in the room
Subterranean is no longer just a group of subject matter experts without a commercial layer — it is a technically excellent team that now thinks more intentionally about what it builds, why it builds it, and who it is building it for.
Why Fractional Worked
Building the foundations required to scale beyond engineering delivery often needs an outside perspective — someone close enough to understand the technology properly, but detached enough to question how it is positioned, prioritised, and brought to market. That is difficult to do from the inside.
What the founders got was not an external consultant operating at a distance. I embedded myself directly into the team two days a week. I got my own company email address and a desk in the office. I spent time onsite in the environments where the technology was actually being used and worked closely day-to-day with the founders and engineers.
Within three months the foundations were in place and the company was moving into its next phase. The relationship continued not because they depended on me, but because enough trust had been built that I became a natural fit for helping lead it.
“Having Chris two days a week worked perfectly for us, both financially and in terms of focus. He didn’t come in and tell us what we were doing was wrong — he worked within the way the team already operated and spent time understanding the thinking behind our decisions first. When he wasn’t in, we were working through what he had already put in place. That rhythm built trust across the team and made it much easier to introduce new ways of working.”
— Anthony Hutton, Co-Founder & CEO, Subterranean