Client Success · Agriportance

As co-founder of Agriportance, Thorsten stepped into product leadership with deep technical roots and a strong sense of purpose. But as the company scaled, he saw the need for a clearer product strategy and stronger team alignment. Since early 2024, Product Matters has supported Thorsten and his team in sharpening their focus, building product leadership across the company, and bridging the gap between sales and product. The result: faster decisions, better collaboration, and real momentum.

Agriportance is powering the biomethane economy with software and services that simplify certification and enable green gas trading. Built on deep industry expertise and a growing product team, they’re turning complexity into opportunity across Europe.

How did you find yourself in a product leadership role at Agriportance?

Well, I kind of got into it by accident. I’m one of the two co-founders of Agriportance and our original idea was that, because I had a background in bioinformatics and IT consulting, I would code the solution. But then we participated in a start-up incubator and they strongly advised us that before we wrote a single line of code we should start by building an MVP based in Excel and WordPress. So I did that, with a lot of help from others, and by the time we were ready to write the code I had so many product-related issues on my table that I ended up specializing in product.

We’ve been working together since the beginning of 2024. What made you decide to get some support on the product management side?

By the time we started working with you we’d already been coding for a year and we had a lot of smaller products which is quite unusual for a start-up and didn’t feel right to us. There was this tendency to add more and more and I found it hard to tell if I was on the right track. Plus I’d had no training as a product manager and I realised that, while I could respond to things when they came up, my approach lacked strategy and focus. That’s when I realised we’d benefit from support. We’ve now got you coaching four people in the company.

What’s surprised you the most in the work we’ve done together so far?

One thing that really surprised me is the idea that product managers shouldn’t provide everything to the engineers. When things don’t go well engineers sometimes have a tendency to hide a bit behind their code and their instructions. I tried to fix this by writing more and more definitions and documentation. But none of it was getting read. Your idea was to try having less documentation, not more, which surprised me.

And how has it influenced your approach?

So at the beginning of 2024 we hired another product manager. Thanks to the coaching – and the fact that she’s really good at her job – she was able to take over a lot of the product management tasks which left me more time to focus on the business and broader strategy. It’s also helped me with managing sales and product. The two teams have quite different perspectives on our customers and how things should be delivered. The coaching has given me more clarity to judge which direction to take things in and how to find compromise when I need to.

What’s been most impactful?

At the beginning you were showing me books by people like Marty Cagan. That learning made a big difference. But next to my own professional development I think the most impactful thing is that we got an overall idea of what approach to use to set up good products, from user research through to the technical delivery. That was really impactful and influenced a lot of decisions like crafting out general terms and conditions for different software packages or evaluating whether certain collaborations are good for the company.

What would your advice be to someone who’s in the same place you were a couple of years ago?

I think at the beginning the most important thing is to have a lot of interviews with users and, based on that, to pick out a problem which is achievable to solve with the resources you’ve got. Ideally you want a problem that’s solvable within a few weeks to months. That way when you deliver it you’ll generate your first revenue as well as some proof of concept for your idea.

It’s also important to be selective when you’re hiring your first engineers. We had this idea that we weren’t very attractive as a startup and should make do with whoever applied. Luckily, we had applications from great people, but those early hires are key and will influence the course of the company. Make sure there’s alignment.

Where are things going from here?

We offer services around the renewable energy commodity biomethane. We offer software solutions for people who are trying to achieve their sustainability certifications as well as brokerage services. We’re working on adding new services which create value in terms of data. They’ll be generated for the brokerage arm of your company so you can better market your commodities. And watch out to see us expanding into other markets in Europe.