Sample · Representative excerpt
An abridged, anonymized excerpt of a written evaluation prepared for an early-stage software company. Identifying details, numbers, and market specifics have been removed. The structure, tone, and depth are representative of every engagement.
01
The company is stronger than its narrative. The product is more differentiated than the positioning suggests, and the growth constraint sits upstream of marketing.
The business has assembled the components of a durable category leader: a technically credible product, a small but engaged base of customers who describe the value clearly, and a founding team whose intuition about the problem is measurably ahead of the market. The strategic risk is not capability. It is legibility.
The current positioning describes what the product does. It does not yet describe why the product exists, which customer it is built for, or which alternative it replaces. As a result, the sales conversation is being carried by the founder rather than by the market's own understanding of the category.
Three decisions matter over the next two quarters: narrowing the ideal customer profile to a single, defensible wedge; rewriting the top-of-funnel narrative around a specific replaced behavior rather than a feature comparison; and delaying the planned second product until the first has crossed a clear revenue threshold.
The company does not have a growth problem. It has a positioning problem that is presenting itself as a growth problem.
02
A short account of the business as it exists today, and the decision that prompted this evaluation.
The company is an early-stage software business, roughly eighteen months from first revenue, operating in a category that has been recently reshaped by two adjacent incumbents expanding downward and a wave of horizontal tools expanding into the same buyer. The founding team has direct operating experience in the problem space and built the first version of the product against a specific frustration they encountered in a prior role.
Revenue is concentrated among a small number of design-partner customers acquired through the founders' network. Retention among that cohort is strong; the qualitative feedback is unusually specific. New customer acquisition outside that network has been slower and more expensive than internal projections assumed.
The evaluation was requested in the context of an upcoming funding decision. The founders wanted an outside reading of the business before committing to a growth plan that would be difficult to reverse.
03
What we saw across the materials, without interpretation.
The website and the sales deck describe two different products. The website is written for a technical evaluator; the deck is written for an economic buyer. Neither is written for the person who most often opens the first conversation.
The five most engaged customers share a specific operational trait that is not currently used to define the ideal customer profile. The trait is not mentioned in any external material.
The product changelog shows a pattern of shipping capabilities in response to individual customer requests. Roughly a third of these capabilities are not referenced in any subsequent customer conversation.
The pricing page presents three tiers whose differences are described in features rather than in outcomes. Two of the three tiers have never been sold.
The competitive framing in the deck compares the product against a category the buyer no longer thinks of as the default alternative.
04
How we interpret what we saw, and why the interpretation matters.
The distance between the website and the deck is not a copywriting issue. It reflects an unresolved question about who the product is for. When the answer to that question is unclear inside the company, the market is asked to resolve it, and the market will resolve it in whichever direction is easiest — usually toward the cheapest and least differentiated interpretation.
The shared trait among the most engaged customers is the closest thing the business has to a real signal about fit. Treating it as coincidence rather than as a definition is the single most expensive assumption in the current plan. Every dollar of paid acquisition is being spent against a broader audience than the evidence supports.
The pattern of feature-request-driven shipping is a symptom of the same underlying issue. Without a defined customer, every request looks equally reasonable, and the roadmap becomes a record of who asked most recently rather than a statement of what the product is.
The pricing page is not the problem, but it is a useful diagnostic. Tiers that have never been sold usually indicate that the tiers were designed around the product's internal structure rather than around a customer's willingness to pay for a specific outcome.
A definition the company refuses to make will be made for it, less carefully, by the market.
05
Specific decisions, in order, with the reasoning attached to each.
Rewrite internal and external definitions of the buyer around this trait for the next two quarters. Accept the short-term reduction in addressable market. The purpose is not to be smaller; it is to be legible.
Name what the buyer currently does instead of using your product. Describe why that behavior is no longer adequate. Introduce the product as the replacement. Feature descriptions belong on the third slide and below the fold.
The second product should not be built as a hedge against uncertainty in the first. Set the threshold explicitly, publish it internally, and treat it as a gate rather than a target.
Retain the tier that has demonstrated repeat sales and the tier that reflects the outcome the narrowed customer profile is buying. Remove the middle tier and the language that supports it.
The current plan is fundable, but on terms that reflect the ambiguity. One quarter of narrowed execution will change the shape of that conversation more than the equivalent quarter of preparation.
06
Questions the team is best positioned to answer, and which will shape the next evaluation.
Which of your current customers would you rebuild the product for, and which would you decline today?
If the second product did not exist as an option, what would you do with the engineering capacity for the next two quarters?
What is the smallest, most specific claim about your buyer that you would be willing to put on the homepage for a full year?
Which competitor do your customers actually mention when they describe what they left behind — and does that match the one you compare yourself against?
What would have to be true, in evidence rather than in belief, for the narrowed ideal customer profile to be wrong?
If you removed the middle pricing tier tomorrow, what would you tell the customers currently on it, and why?
End of excerpt
A complete evaluation includes an appendix of source material referenced during the analysis, and one written round of follow-up questions after the founder has read the document.