About · Tristan Klement
A practitioner, not an agency
I'm Tristan Klement. SILC is my product studio: a deliberately small practice built on a simple observation: the advice startups need most isn't another framework, it's a senior operator who's shipped, sitting on their side of the table.
I spent years as a product consultant at one of South Africa's leading digital product studios, taking founders from napkin sketch to launched product: dozens of discovery sprints, MVP builds and the occasional respectful argument about scope. Since then I've run product in-house at a scale-up fintechserving some of the world's largest asset managers.
That combination is the point. Consultancy taught me pace and pattern recognition across dozens of products; operating inside a scale-up keeps me honest about what actually survives contact with engineering reality, compliance and enterprise clients. SILC clients get both: consultancy-speed thinking, operator-grade pragmatism.
And SILC isn't advice-only. I lead the product (strategy, scope, delivery) and build with a small, trusted engineering networkI've shipped with before. So you get one accountable person from idea to launched product, not a strategy deck thrown over the wall to a dev shop you never met.
The name? SILC, because good product work should feel like it: smooth on the surface, deceptively strong under load.
How I work
Four principles, non-negotiable
01
Evidence beats opinion
Every recommendation traces to something observable: an interview pattern, a funnel number, a churned customer's own words. If I can't point to evidence, I say 'this is a guess' out loud.
02
Less, but shipped
The most valuable thing a product consultant can do is usually subtraction. I will always argue for the smaller scope that ships this quarter over the complete one that ships 'eventually'.
03
Systems, not dependencies
A good engagement ends. I build the frameworks, rituals and documents your team runs without me, and then I leave on purpose. If a consultant makes themselves permanent, something went wrong.
04
Straight answers
If the idea shouldn't be built, I'll say so before you spend the budget. If SILC isn't the right fit for the job, I'll tell you who is. It costs me some engagements and it's why the referrals keep coming.
What clients say when the engagement ends
“Tristan's superpower is making 'no' feel like progress. We shipped in six weeks what we'd budgeted five months for.”
“We were three signatures away from committing eight months to the wrong build. Tristan's proof cost a fraction of that and pointed us straight at what patients actually wanted.”
“The discovery memo told us not to build the thing we'd hired him to scope. Best money we've spent. We built the adjacent thing and it's now 30% of revenue.”
Free 30-minute intro
Ready to build the right thing?
A free 30-minute intro call: bring your product problem, leave with a straight opinion and a clear next step, whether or not that step involves me.