About

Built for the people building Australia's next great products.

Why we exist

The room senior product leaders were missing.

Australia has world-class product leaders, but the best conversations between them happened by accident — a hallway at a conference, a DM after a talk, a dinner that never repeated. Product Counsel makes that conversation deliberate.

It isn't a course, a community in name only, or a content channel. It's a curated network with a small core doing the real work, and a wider room carrying the ideas out. "Counsel" means an advisory council of product people — not lawyers. The bar is simple: they either made it, or they're going to.

It's built by Rampersand, the Australian venture firm — for the people building the country's next great product-led companies. The room and the fund share the same belief: the craft is the moat.

What we hold to

High-trust, by design

Every room runs under the Chatham House Rule. No recordings. Slides optional. What's said here is for the people in it — which is exactly why people say the real thing.

Small on purpose

Reach without intimacy is content marketing; intimacy without reach is a private group chat. Keep the Counsel small so the conversation stays honest, and let Field Notes carry the ideas further.

From the trenches

No keynotes about theory. Members present work they shipped in the last ninety days — the pricing they got wrong, the bets that paid off, the 2am problems.

Made it, or making it

The bar isn't a title. It's the people building Australia's next great product-led companies, alongside the ones who already have.

Who runs the room

Program Lead · Venture Partner, Rampersand

Rod Hamilton

Co-founder and former CPO of Culture Amp, with two decades building product-led companies. Rod chairs the Counsel personally — setting topics, recruiting presenters, and sitting in on the hard sessions.

Operations Lead · Product Counsel

Phil Jacob

Phil has spent his career building great products inside startups across Sydney and New York, shipping the kind of work the room exists to talk about. Now he's the operator behind Product Counsel. He turns a topic into a full Pulse, a guest list into exactly the right fifteen, and a strong session into Field Notes the market actually reads.

A note on RampersandRampersand backs early-stage Australian and New Zealand founders. Product Counsel is how the firm invests in the craft itself — convening the leaders shaping the next generation of product companies, and amplifying what they learn to the whole market.

Visit Rampersand ↗

If this is the room you belong in, there are two ways in.

Apply to the Counsel Start with Field Notes