The Validation Sprint
Three weeks. Real customers. One decision you can act on.
Fixed scope · Fixed price · Contact for pricing
Book a fit call to check availabilityWho this is for
This is built for you if:
- You've raised, and the money is now buying decisions you can't take back
- You have some traction but can't tell whether it's real or coincidental
- Your team disagrees about who the customer actually is
- You're about to commit a quarter of engineering time to something nobody has validated
- You've done interviews, but they're sitting in a folder nobody has synthesized
This is not for you if you're looking for a research report, a design partner, or someone to validate a decision you've already made.
The problem with how most teams validate
Founders don't skip customer research because they don't believe in it. They skip it because the version they were taught is slow, expensive, and ends in a document instead of an answer.
So they substitute: advisor opinions, investor feedback, competitor teardowns, and the loudest customer in the room. All of which feel like evidence and none of which are.
The sprint is designed around a single constraint: it has to end in a decision, and it has to end in three weeks.
What happens, week by week
Week 1 — Frame the decision
Most research fails before it starts, because nobody agreed on what question they were answering.
We define the actual decision on the table. We articulate what would have to be true for your current direction to work. We design the study to test exactly that — and nothing else. Then we recruit.
Output: a decision brief you and your team sign off on.
Week 2 — Listen properly
Eight to twelve structured interviews with people in your target segment. Recruited to a screen, not pulled from your friendliest users.
The interview protocol is built to get past what people think they should say. That's the psycholinguistics part — the questions are designed around how people actually construct explanations of their own behaviour, which is unreliable in specific and predictable ways.
Output: synthesized notes and emerging patterns, shared as we go.
Week 3 — Decide
Full synthesis. Then a written recommendation with the reasoning behind it, and a working session to pressure-test it with your team.
Output: the decision memo, plus everything below.
What you walk away with
The decision memo
Build, pivot, or kill. With the evidence, the reasoning, and the confidence level. Written to be forwarded to your board.
An ICP definition that holds up
Based on observed trigger events and behaviour, not firmographics.
A messaging framework
Built from the actual words your customers used. Ready to go onto your site.
A first-five-minutes activation plan
What a new user needs to experience before they'll come back.
The honest version
Some sprints end in "keep going, you're closer than you think."
Some end in "the product is fine, you're selling it to the wrong person."
Some end in "stop."
I don't know which one yours will be, and I won't pretend otherwise to close the engagement. If you want someone to confirm your existing plan, there are cheaper ways to get that.
Pricing
Contact for pricing. The sprint is a fixed-scope engagement: half up front, half on delivery.
A Signal Read booked within the prior 60 days is credited in full.
For context: comparable discovery sprints from established practices run $15,000, and traditional research firms quote three to six months and six figures. The scope here is fixed and the method is tight — not lighter work, just no padding.
Start with twenty minutes.
You don't have to decide about a sprint to book a call. Tell me what you're stuck on and we'll figure out together whether this is the right shape of help.
Book a fit call