FIND PMF + GTM + LAUNCH — EARLY-STAGE SPRINT

Jake McMahon
Jake McMahon — ProductQuant
8+ years B2B SaaS · Behavioural Psychology + Big Data (Masters)

Launch knowing exactly who your best customer is — and with a GTM built from what they actually told you.

A structured sprint that combines customer discovery, product-market fit validation, and go-to-market strategy. For teams that are pre-launch or in their first six months — and want to build the right thing for the right people, not find out the hard way.

Validated ICP + GTM your team believes in — or we keep working · Structured sprint

WHAT YOU HAVE AT THE END

ICP defined Built from interviews — who your best customer is and what they have in common
JTBD synthesis The job customers are actually hiring your product to do, in their own words
Willingness-to-pay Validated price signals and the framing that anchors value
Positioning document Your core narrative, built from customer conversations, not internal brainstorm
GTM channel strategy 2–3 ranked channels with 90-day priorities
Launch measurement Analytics live, key metrics defined, 30-day review included

Typical engagement · Scoped by interview volume · Structured sprint

We build your go-to-market from real customer conversations.

We talk to your potential customers, find out exactly what they need, and build your launch strategy from their answers. You get clarity and confidence.

FOUNDER UNCERTAINTY

"Who should we actually sell this to first?"

We interview people in your target market and find the specific group that has the biggest need and is easiest to reach. You stop guessing and focus your launch on the right people.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

"Is this feature worth building?"

We ask potential customers about their problems and present your solution. You see which parts they get excited about and which they ignore, so you build what matters.

MARKETING MESSAGING

"What words should we use on our website?"

We record how your best customers describe their own problems in their own words. You get a list of phrases to use in your ads and copy that will actually connect.

SALES PREPARATION

"What questions will our first customers ask?"

We document every doubt, question, and objection that comes up in our interviews. Your sales team knows exactly what to expect and how to answer before the first call.

TIMELINE
Structured Sprint

From first customer conversation through launch readiness and 30-day measurement review. Tight phases, clear gates, no bloat.

KEY OUTCOME
Validated ICP

You launch knowing who your best customer is, what job they hired you to do, and how to reach more of them. Built from interviews — not assumptions.

INVESTMENT
Scoped Engagement

Scoped to $7,997–$12,997 depending on interview volume and discovery scope. Typical engagement lands at $9,997.

Teams Jake has worked with

THE EARLY-STAGE REALITY

Built for a customer who turned out to be the wrong one

“We spent six months building what we assumed the market wanted. We launched, got some signups, and realised we’d been targeting the wrong ICP entirely. We had to go back and talk to customers we should have talked to before we wrote a line of code.”

Founder — Pre-revenue SaaS

Signed up anyone who’d talk to them — no pattern emerged

“We had 40 early users but they were all completely different. Different company sizes, different industries, different use cases. We couldn’t build a sales motion because we couldn’t describe who we were actually for.”

Co-founder — Bootstrapped B2B

Launched to silence — no GTM, just a product page

“We launched on Product Hunt, got a spike of visitors, and then nothing. We had no channel strategy, no ICP we could target, and no message that landed. The product was good. The go-to-market wasn’t there.”

Founder — Early-stage SaaS

No idea what they’d actually pay, or why

“We picked a price that felt reasonable and put it on the site. Nobody asked us to justify it. When customers pushed back, we didn’t know whether the price was wrong or the value prop was wrong. We were guessing at everything.”

Founder — Pre-launch SaaS

WHAT THIS SPRINT TYPICALLY REVEALS

The pattern you assumed is usually close — but not close enough to build a GTM on.

Your best-fit customers share a specific trigger — not just a job title.

ICP isn’t a demographic. It’s a situation. The interviews almost always reveal a specific moment or event that makes someone ready to buy — and that trigger becomes the hook your GTM is built around.

Customers hired your product to solve a problem you didn’t know was the main one.

Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) interviews reveal the actual reason someone reached for your product. That reason is almost never your primary marketing message — and once you know it, your positioning shifts from features to outcomes.

Price tolerance is almost always different from what the founding team assumed.

Willingness-to-pay validation surfaces what customers will actually pay — and crucially, what framing makes your price feel justified. You launch with a price point backed by what customers told you, not what felt reasonable internally.

Your GTM channel is more specific than “content + outbound.”

Early-stage teams default to broad channel strategies because they don’t yet know where their specific ICP pays attention. The interviews reveal 1–2 channels your target customer actually uses — and the GTM focuses effort there.

THE DELIVERABLES

17 deliverables that turn customer evidence into PMF, GTM, and launch assets.

Deliverable 01
Market Segmentation Analysis

Your total addressable market is broken into distinct customer segments with different problems, buying triggers, and willingness to pay — so your early GTM focuses on the segment most likely to produce fast revenue rather than treating everyone as a potential customer.

Deliverable 02
Customer Interview Synthesis (Typically 10–15 Interviews)

Between 10 and 15 customer and prospect conversations are synthesised into a structured picture of the real problem you're solving, the language buyers use to describe it, and the moments that trigger them to look for a solution.

Deliverable 03
Competitive Landscape Mapping

Every meaningful alternative your prospects are currently using or considering is mapped — including the non-obvious ones like spreadsheets and internal tools — so your positioning is built around how buyers actually compare options rather than how you wish they did.

Deliverable 04
Pricing Sensitivity Research

What your target customers are willing to pay, which packaging structures make sense to them, and where price becomes a blocker is researched through direct conversation and market signals — so your pricing model is set by evidence rather than intuition or what competitors charge.

Deliverable 05
Channel Viability Assessment

The specific channels where your ICP actually learns about new tools, trusts recommendations, and makes purchase decisions are identified — so your launch plan is built around channels that can work for your stage and budget rather than the ones that worked for a different company at a different time.

Deliverable 06
ICP Definition with Validated Attributes

A written ICP document grounded in real interview data — covering the firmographic profile, the problem they're actively trying to solve, the triggers that make them ready to buy, and the red flags that predict a bad fit.

Deliverable 07
Value Proposition Framework

Your core value proposition is structured around the language your actual customers use to describe their problem — making it immediately legible to the buyers you're targeting rather than internally meaningful but externally opaque.

Deliverable 08
Pricing Model with Tier Structure

A pricing model with recommended tiers, price points, and packaging rationale — designed around what your target customers have told you they'll pay and structured to support both self-serve adoption and direct sales conversations.

Deliverable 09
GTM Launch Plan with 90-Day Calendar

A sequenced 90-day plan covering every major launch activity — from pre-launch validation through first paying customers — with owners, timing, and a clear definition of what hitting each milestone means in practice.

Deliverable 10
Measurement Framework for PMF Signals

A defined set of metrics and thresholds that tell you whether you're approaching product-market fit — so you're not relying on gut feel or vanity metrics to make the decision about when to scale.

Deliverable 11
Sales Enablement Materials

A talk track aligned to the validated value proposition, an objection handling guide, and qualifying questions built around the real ICP. Your team or founders get the tools they need to run effective early sales conversations.

Deliverable 12
Research Methodology Documentation

A complete record of how the market research and customer interviews were conducted — so the process can be repeated as your market evolves and anyone on the team can understand how the outputs were derived.

Deliverable 13
Customer Interview Insights Report

A structured synthesis of every customer conversation, organised by theme, pain point, and buying trigger — serving as a permanent reference for product, marketing, and sales decisions long after the engagement ends.

Deliverable 14
Pricing Rationale Document

A written explanation of why each pricing decision was made, what alternatives were considered, and what signals from research support the model — so the team can defend pricing decisions confidently and revisit them with the right context when the time comes.

Deliverable 15
Launch Checklist and Timeline

A complete, sequenced checklist covering every task required to execute the launch plan — so nothing is missed in the final sprint and the team has one document to track progress against.

Deliverable 16
Team Alignment Session (Recorded)

A live session with your founding team or leadership to walk through all research outputs, strategic decisions, and the full launch plan — recorded so every stakeholder has access to the full context, not just the conclusions.

Deliverable 17
60-Day Launch Support + Three Strategy Sessions + Investor Pitch Preparation Support

Two months of direct access to get answers and adjust the plan as early market signals come in. Three structured sessions across the launch period to review what's working and where the plan needs to adapt. If you're raising capital, your PMF evidence, ICP definition, and GTM plan are structured into the narrative form investors expect.

Everything above for $9,997. No hourly billing. No scope creep. Everything stays with your team.

WHY THIS IS DIFFERENT

Most early-stage teams plan a GTM before they know who their customer actually is. This sprint inverts that order.

Product-market fit (PMF) is the point at which a product solves a real problem well enough that a specific group of customers reliably choose it, pay for it, and want more of it. Most teams pursue it by building, launching, and hoping signal emerges. This sprint compresses that discovery: structured interviews first, GTM after the signal exists.

The interviews surface the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) — the underlying problem customers were trying to solve when they found you. That job becomes the anchor for your positioning, your channel strategy, and your launch narrative. Your team goes to market with a story built from evidence, not internal alignment meetings.

THE TIMELINE

Five phases: interviews, validation, positioning, GTM build, launch and review.

Weeks 1–2

Discovery

Customer interviews conducted and synthesised. JTBD patterns identified. Initial ICP hypothesis formed.

Week 3

Validation

Willingness-to-pay testing. ICP criteria confirmed. Disqualification criteria defined.

Weeks 3–4

ICP + Positioning

Persona documents delivered. Positioning narrative written from interview evidence.

Weeks 4–5

GTM Build

Channel strategy scoped and ranked. Analytics setup delivered. Measurement framework live.

Day 30 post-launch

Launch Review

First-month data reviewed. ICP signal assessed against hypothesis. Next priorities set.

Weekly check-ins at each phase gate · 24-hour decision turnaround · No steering committees

FIT CHECK

Teams that can run customer interviews and act on what they learn get the most from this.

GOOD FIT
Pre-launch or < 6 months post-launch, with people to interview
Early-stage · interview-ready · open to what the data says

You have a product (or a near-complete one) and access to 8–20 people who fit your target profile — early customers, trial users, or target audience members who’ve engaged with you. You want to understand who your best customer is before building a GTM around assumptions. You’re willing to learn something that challenges what you thought you knew.

  • A validated ICP built from interviews — not an internal hypothesis
  • A positioning document your team can use immediately in outreach and copy
  • A GTM channel strategy with 90-day priorities, not a list of options

You launch knowing who to target, what to say, and where to reach them — and you have a measurement framework to tell you whether it’s working.

NOT A FIT
Pre-idea, or product still in development with no one to interview
Wrong stage or no interview access

If you don’t have a product yet or can’t access 8+ people who fit your target profile, the interviews won’t produce reliable signal. The research requires real conversations with people who have the problem you’re solving — not test participants. If you’re already 12+ months post-launch with strong traction, this sprint is also the wrong scope — you need a different kind of analysis.

What this sprint doesn’t cover

The sprint delivers the research, the strategy, and the measurement setup. Your team executes the GTM. If you need implementation — ad campaigns built, outreach sequences written, sales playbooks drafted — that’s a separate engagement.

  • Paid advertising — the sprint identifies channels, your team runs the ads
  • Website or sales copy — the positioning document informs it, but we don’t write it
  • Sales collateral or pitch decks — those are downstream of the positioning work
  • Ongoing coaching beyond the 6-week engagement and 30-day review
Talk to Jake about implementation →
Jake McMahon

Jake McMahon — ProductQuant

Jake McMahon
8+ years B2B SaaS · Behavioural Psychology + Big Data (Masters)

I run this sprint myself. The customer interviews, the JTBD synthesis, the ICP definition, the willingness-to-pay analysis, the positioning document, the GTM strategy, and the measurement setup — all of it. There’s no team behind me producing templates. This is a research-led sprint where the output is specific to your product, your customers, and the patterns that emerged from what they actually said.

Most early-stage GTM strategies are built on the founding team’s assumptions about who the customer is. Those assumptions are usually close — that’s the problem. Close enough that nobody questions them. The interviews surface the gap, and the sprint rebuilds the strategy around what the evidence says. The goal isn’t to validate what you already believe. It’s to find out what’s actually true before you spend the next six months acting on the wrong hypothesis.

I won’t do this:
  • Define your ICP from internal assumptions when there are customers I can interview
  • Build a GTM strategy before the interview synthesis is complete
  • Recommend channels without tying them to how your specific ICP actually gets discovered
  • Deliver a positioning document that sounds good internally but wasn’t stress-tested with customer language
  • Call something product-market fit without showing you what signal would need to look different to disprove it
What if we’ve already done some customer research?
We start from what you have. If you’ve run discovery calls, I’ll review those first and use them to sharpen the interview guide rather than starting from scratch. The sprint adapts to your existing evidence — it doesn’t ignore it. In some cases, existing research means we can skip straight to deeper willingness-to-pay or GTM validation rather than running the full interview set from zero.

Teams Jake has worked with

Gainify
Guardio
monday.com
Payoneer
thirdweb
Canary Mail

PRICING

Scoped to the size of the research. A fixed-price sprint based on interview volume.

$9,997
typical · $7,997–$12,997 by scope
4–6 week sprint
  • Customer discovery interviews (8–12) conducted and synthesised by Jake
  • ICP definition with situational and firmographic criteria
  • JTBD synthesis with verbatim customer language
  • Willingness-to-pay validation and pricing framing
  • Positioning document built from interview evidence
  • GTM channel strategy with 90-day priorities
  • Launch analytics setup — metrics, events, dashboard template
  • 30-day post-launch data review
  • All assets yours to keep permanently

Price scales with interview volume and discovery scope. Discussed at kickoff.

Book a 30-minute call →

Guarantee: You launch with a validated ICP and a GTM strategy your team believes in — or we keep working until you do, at no extra cost.

Questions.

Or book a call →
Do we need existing customers to do this? +
Ideally you have 8–15 people you can interview — paying customers, trial users, or target audience members who fit the profile. If you’re truly pre-launch with nobody to talk to yet, the sprint isn’t the right starting point. But if you have early adopters, waitlist signups, or people who’ve seen a demo and fit your target profile, that’s enough to run the research and produce reliable signal.
What if we have no users at all yet? +
You need to be able to get 8–12 conversations scheduled. These don’t have to be paying customers — they can be target audience members, early waitlist signups, or people who’ve expressed interest. If you genuinely have no access to anyone in your target market, this sprint isn’t the right starting point. Talk to us first and we’ll tell you honestly whether it’s the right time.
How many interviews does the sprint include? +
8–12 structured customer discovery interviews, conducted by Jake using the Jobs to Be Done framework. You facilitate introductions — Jake schedules, runs every session, and synthesises the patterns. You own the recordings. Interview volume is one of the main factors that determines where in the $7,997–$12,997 range the engagement lands.
What’s included vs. what’s not? +
Included: customer discovery interviews (8–12), ICP definition and persona synthesis, JTBD analysis, willingness-to-pay validation, positioning document, GTM channel strategy with 90-day priorities, launch analytics setup, and 30-day post-launch data review. Not included: paid advertising, website or sales copy, sales collateral, pitch decks, or ongoing retainer coaching. Those are separate engagements.
What happens if we discover product-market fit isn’t there? +
That’s a genuinely useful outcome — better to know in week 3 than month 9. Most teams discover partial fit: the core problem is real, but the ICP definition or channel is wrong. The sprint identifies which dimension is weak and delivers a prioritised experiment backlog so you know exactly what to test next. Knowing what doesn’t work is more actionable than guessing.
How much time does this require from our team? +
2–3 hours per week from the founder or product lead. One check-in per phase gate, approvals within 24 hours when needed. You facilitate customer introductions; Jake runs the interviews and synthesises everything. No steering committee, no status decks, no weekly slide updates. The only hard requirement is getting interview introductions made promptly in weeks 1–2.

Launch knowing who your best customer is — with a GTM built from what they actually said.

Customer discovery interviews, ICP definition, willingness-to-pay validation, positioning, GTM channel strategy, and a measurement setup that tells you whether it’s working.