Strategy · Deep dive 01
Discovery & Market Fit
Before the first sketch or commit, we read the territory. An honest map of users, competitors, and the friction no one names out loud — the starting point that keeps every later decision anchored.
The short of it
A compact research engagement that pressure-tests your product hypothesis against real users, a real market, and the unsexy operational realities inside your own organisation. You leave with evidence, not opinions.
Does this sound familiar?
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Stakeholders are confident the product should do X, but no one has actually asked the people who'd use it.
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The competitive landscape is described as 'empty' — in practice it's just unexplored.
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User feedback comes from the five customers whoever-answered-Slack-today happened to talk to.
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The backlog has forty items and no one can say which of them the market is asking for.
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Investors keep asking the same 'but do they actually want this?' question and the team is running out of answers.
The customer payoff
What changes after
What you feel once it’s running.
A shared, written understanding of the user and their job-to-be-done — not a deck, a working document you'll reuse for years.
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A sharper definition of the product's niche, with the competitors ranked honestly by the threat they represent.
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Fewer arguments in roadmap meetings because the bets are grounded in evidence everyone has access to.
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The signals you should be tracking from day one so next quarter's decisions get easier, not harder.
Phases
⏱ 3–5 weeksHow Discovery & Market Fit actually runs.
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01
Immersion
Kickoff workshop plus two weeks of desk research. We embed in your Slack, read the support tickets, and interview your team before we touch the market.
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02
User signal
8–12 qualitative user interviews against a shared discussion guide, plus whatever quantitative data your product already emits. Patterns surface fast.
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03
Competitive cut
We map the real competitive set — including the ones that don't call themselves your competitor — and score them on what matters to your users, not to the analyst firms.
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04
Synthesis
A working session where we walk through the findings with your decision-makers and agree the 3–5 implications that have to inform the next quarter's work.
The hand-off
What you walk away with
What lands in your hands — every artefact, nothing hidden.
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Living research document — users, competitors, operational constraints, open questions
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Jobs-to-be-done summary with verbatim quotes
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Competitive landscape matrix with ranked threat scoring
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Top 3–5 strategic implications, prioritised
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Recommended metric dashboard — what to track next
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Recording + transcript of every user interview
Before you ask
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Q·01 Do we need existing users for this to work?
No. If you're pre-launch we run the research against target-segment users rather than your installed base. Findings are different — early-stage work focuses more on job-to-be-done and willingness-to-pay — but the method still holds.
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Q·02 What if we already have a lot of research lying around?
Good, less work for us. We'll start by auditing what you have and fill only the gaps. Research you've done is never wasted on this engagement; it's a head start.
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Q·03 How do you recruit interviewees?
Three channels depending on your situation: your existing users (via your product or sales list), a recruiter network we work with, or your inbound waitlist. We cover the incentive costs up to a fixed per-interview cap.
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Q·04 Will there be a 60-page PDF at the end?
No. You'll get a living document that fits in one browser tab and a 45-minute walkthrough. PDFs gather dust; working documents get updated.
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Q·05 What happens if the research says our idea is wrong?
That's the point. Finding out in three weeks instead of nine months is the whole value of the engagement. We'll work with you on what the finding actually implies — sometimes it's a pivot, more often it's a sharpening.
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Q·06 Can this be fixed-price?
Yes. Discovery scopes well and we quote a fixed fee once we've agreed the number of interviews and the competitive depth.
Ready to start
Ready to map the territory?
Send us what you've got — a one-pager, a Miro, a half-written memo. We'll come back with a scoped proposal within three business days.
Start a discoveryThe wider map
Every service page at a glance.
Each link below opens a dedicated page on that specific piece of one of our four service pillars. Jump sideways — different service, same way of working.
Digital Product Strategy
Service overview →- 01 Discovery & Market Fit — you’re here
- 02 Vision & Positioning
- 03 Roadmap & Prioritisation
- 04 Experience Strategy
- 05 Technology Advisory
- 06 CTO as a Service
- 07 COO as a Service