COO @ Chatsie
Situation
Chatsie, a small UK consumer-tech company, builds an easy-to-use phone for older adults. The product was resonant: a clear mission, strong endorsements from the Alzheimer's Society, Visiting Angels, and The Times, and sales starting to come in.
What it didn't yet have was the infrastructure underneath that early traction to ramp up further. The inbound strategy and operational foundations were thin for the stage, regulatory obligations weren't yet fully understood, and there was more to learn about the customer and how the product served them. With a US expansion on the horizon, the business needed to stabilize and sharpen its strategy before taking on the cost and complexity of a new market.
Additionally, the parent venture incubator, wished to bring operations back into its care, alongside an additional telecommunication venture.
Role
I joined as Interim COO for six months to lead the company through this transition working closely with the founder, the CEO, and the managing director of the venture incubator.
Working alongside a small operational team, my remit spanned strategy, operations, finance, compliance, growth, and product. At this stage every part of a startup is interlinked, so the role was to bring those threads together, set the strategy, and make the calls that moved the business forward, while aligning its direction with the wider portfolio it was being brought back into.
Domains: Consumer Hardware; Consumer Electronics; AgeTech; Telcoms; D2C; Ecommerce
"Melinda is that rare breed of someone who is highly strategic, but also a brilliant executor. She was able to be in the detail across functions ..."
Approach
The work started with an audit: taking inventory of the situation, determining what had to be true before the company could expand, and ordering everything else around that.
Reset the strategy at the right stage. I reoriented the business around stabilization and sustainable growth, holding the US expansion until the UK operational, regulatory, and product-market fit questions were answered.
Refocused the model. I drove a shift from hardware-led growth to a software-first strategy, treating the phone as a deployment channel rather than the core product, and reworked the subscription packaging and pricing around the value to the end user.
Rebuilt the inbound growth foundations. I rebuilt the website end to end for conversion, SEO, and a clearer narrative for customers and partners, which improved return on ad spend. I added quizzes and forms that, for the first time, generated leads we could nurture through email campaigns. I worked together with the Growth Marketeer to significantly increase the ROI on ad spend and purchase conversion.
Reviewed the product strategy. I assessed the product against where it needed to be, identifying what would have to be reworked or improved to stay current and deliver more value, with US expansion and regulatory compliance in mind, and laid the foundation for the next iteration of the Chatsie software.
Professionalized operations. I streamlined workflows, built a financial model to support strategic decisions, improved visibility, and reduced costs, and helped unblock execution in customer success and fulfillment by transitioning disjointed existing systems to singular points of truth.
Strengthened the risk posture. I led work to map data collection, data flows, legal exposure, and regulatory obligations, significantly reducing compliance risk. This included a transition from Bubble for purchase, fulfillment, and customer management data.
Supported and grew the team. I mentored team members, helped them develop in their roles, and unblocked their execution, leaving them able to continue operations after my departure.
Challenge
Most of the difficulty was in sequencing under pressure, with limited time and resources. Several priorities all felt urgent at once, and the job was to hold a clear line on what came first: what could realistically be done now with the resources at hand, and what needed to be set up for a future when more would be available. The hard part was rarely any single decision; it was the order the decisions happened in, and staying disciplined about that order when everything was asking to be first.