SHORT ANSWER
A Head of Product runs the product function — team, process, roadmap execution — and usually reports to a founder or CEO. A CPO sits on the executive team, owns product as a business line alongside revenue and engineering, and is accountable to the board. The practical difference is scope of accountability: function versus company. Titles inflate at startups, so check the mandate, not the label.
Answered by Andrew Crossley, AI Product Consultant & Product Partner · Updated 2026-08-01
Title inflation costs money. Companies advertise CPO roles for Head of Product mandates, attract executives, and then frustrate them with no seat at the table.
It also matters for candidates: taking a CPO title without executive decision rights damages the next move rather than helping it.
Does this person present product performance to the board and own the number? Yes = CPO. No = Head of Product.
A CPO typically leads PMs plus design and research. A Head of Product may lead PMs only.
CPO sets which markets and business lines product pursues. Head of Product optimises delivery within that.
Under twenty people: Head of Product, or fractional CPO. Multiple product lines and two-plus PMs: real CPO seat.
FROM EXPERIENCE
Most seed companies asking for a CPO need a Head of Product with strong strategic judgement, or one to two days a week of genuine executive product leadership while a Head of Product runs the function.
That combination gives board-level product thinking without a £200,000 executive salary against unvalidated revenue.
CPO. UK ranges run roughly £110,000–£150,000 for Head of Product and £150,000–£220,000 for CPO, plus equity.
Commonly, as the company adds product lines and the function grows beyond a single team.
In US-structured companies, yes: VP Product runs the function, CPO holds the executive seat.
IN SHORT
The CPO role, when you need one, and how it compares to CTO or VP Product.
Read morePart-time product leadership for a team that already has PMs.
Read moreFull-time cover for a gap, a turnaround or a funding round.
Read moreProduct leadership on retainer for founders who need judgement, not headcount.
Fractional CPO engagementsTHE FRAMEWORK
MORE ANSWERS
A fractional CPO is a senior product executive who owns product strategy, discovery and delivery for one to three days a week instead of full-time. They set the product direction, decide what gets built and what gets cut, run the operating cadence with engineering, own the product metrics reported to the board, and coach or hire the permanent product team that eventually replaces them.
A fractional CPO costs roughly £4,000–£10,000 per month in the UK, or $6,000–$15,000 in the US, depending on days per week. One day a week sits at the bottom of that range, two-plus days at the top. There is no employer's National Insurance, pension, equity or recruiter fee, so the loaded cost is close to the headline number.
Hire a fractional CPO when product decisions have become the bottleneck but you cannot yet justify a full-time executive. In practice that is after you have engineers building and before you have product-market fit: usually pre-seed to Series A, three to fifteen people, with a roadmap that keeps growing and a founder who no longer has time to run discovery properly.
A fractional CPO is worth it when product decisions are costing you more than the retainer — which, with four engineers on payroll, happens fast. One quarter of misdirected engineering costs £50,000–£80,000 in salary alone. The retainer pays for itself if it prevents a single wrong quarter. It is not worth it if you lack build capacity, or will not give the role decision rights.