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BotanikBotanik

Your tools have changed.
Product fundamentals haven't.

Botanik helps leaders define the strategic and operational foundations their product organizations need, and makes sure AI doesn't replace great product thinking.

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Robert Pudlik, Founder of Botanik

About

Built by someone who's done this work.

Botanik is a one person practice, on purpose. I've spent over 20 years leading product at organizations from SaaS startups to The Home Depot, where I helped build a Product Center of Excellence used by hundreds of product teams.

Every engagement here is run by me, from the first call to the final handover.

More about how I got here

What I do

Three ways I help.

Whether you need to define what you're building and why, turn scattered AI use into a system that actually runs your work, or fix how your product organization operates, I can help.

01

Strategic Foundations

Before you can operate well, you have to agree on what you're actually trying to do.

Most product organizations run hard without a shared answer to the basic questions: what are we building, why does it matter to the business, and how will we know if it worked. I work with leadership teams to define product vision, strategic bets, and the discovery and prioritization practices that keep a roadmap grounded in evidence instead of the loudest voice in the room. It's the foundation everything else, including your operating model, stands on.

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02

Agentic Systems Design

A human touch is behind any great agentic system.

Most companies are one or two years into AI and still using it the same way they did on day one: individuals typing into chat windows, getting good answers, and doing the work by hand anyway. The next step is not a better model or another license. It's a system, where specific agents own specific work, coordinate with each other, and run toward an outcome you defined. I design that system and write the instruction sets that make it work. What each agent is for, what it's told, what it decides on its own, when it hands off, and where a person still signs. Platform agnostic, and built around your process rather than someone's product.

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03

Product Operating Model Assessments

Sometimes the problem isn't what's being built. It's how the team behind it is organized.

AI has made it easier to build software and harder to ignore the cracks in how a product organization actually runs: unclear decision rights, titles that don't match the work being done, roadmaps that don't survive contact with the business. I run a structured assessment of your product organization, covering structure, decision rights, title to task alignment, and maturity, and deliver a written report and a roadmap you can act on. It's the same framework I used to scale a Product Center of Excellence for 600+ product managers at The Home Depot.

Also useful during private equity diligence or the first 100 days after an acquisition, when you need an honest, outside read on a product organization fast.

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Who I work with

I help leaders define strategy, put their work on a system of coordinated agents, and fix how their product organizations run.

I work with three kinds of people:

  • Product and business leaders who need to define, or redefine, the strategic foundation for their product work: the vision, the strategy, and how decisions get made.
  • Operations and company leaders who have AI everywhere and results nowhere, and want their work running on a coordinated set of agents instead of a hundred separate chat windows.
  • Product and business leaders who need an outside, honest read on whether their product organization is actually built to perform.

Sound familiar?

If any of these are true, get in touch.

  • You can't finish the sentence "our product strategy is..." without it turning into a roadmap debate.
  • Everyone has an AI license. You still can't name a process that runs differently because of it.
  • You've been asked what the company's agent strategy is, and the honest answer is that you have tools, not a strategy.
  • Someone built an impressive agent demo. Six weeks later nobody uses it.
  • Leadership is asking about AI. You don't have a clear answer.
  • Your roadmap looks fine on paper, but nothing ships on time.
  • Titles on your team don't match the work people are actually doing.
  • You're evaluating, or you just acquired, a company and need an honest read on how its product organization actually works.

Let's work together

Let's talk.

Book a 30-minute call to talk about your product strategy, what it would take to put your work on a system of agents, or whether your product organization is set up to perform. No pitch. No commitment. Just an honest conversation about whether this is the right fit.

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