Before the sprint

Choose the market, use case and buyer before you position for them.

The most consequential decision is often made by inheritance: the first customer’s industry becomes the strategy. We compare candidate markets, use cases and buyers on evidence of need, access, alternatives and the proof you can already show — then recommend where to focus first.

Map your opportunity See the flagship sprint

The problem

Where you compete decides more than how well you compete.

Teams pour years into how they win — the product, the pitch, the brand — while the decision that dominates all of it goes unexamined. The market a company knows best is not always the best first market open to it.

We turn the decision into evidence. For each candidate: who buys, what they use today, how contested it is, what you can already prove there, and how you would reach the buyer. Where it helps, we also record what AI assistants say when buyers ask about the category — a signal of how settled the answer already is, not a measure of demand.

The output is a decision with its trade-offs written down: where to start, what to prove first, and what to defer on purpose.

Choosing a first wedge
Several plausible applications
A new geography
A sprint whose market is still open

Deliverables

What you receive.

Opportunity map: Candidate markets, use cases and buyers on one page, compared on the same criteria.
Use-case priorities: Which application to lead with, and why, given the evidence you have now.
Buyer and access read: Who decides in each candidate, and how realistically you can reach them.
Alternatives and saturation: What buyers use today, who already holds the buyer’s attention, and how defensible that position is.
Evidence fit: What you can already prove in each candidate, and what you would need to show.
Sizing where it matters: Market sizing from sources that can be checked, with the assumptions stated rather than buried.
Entry sequence: Where to start, what to prove first, and what to defer — written down so the deferral stays a decision.

When the market and buyer are already clear, start with the sprint. When they are not, this comes first, and its output becomes the sprint’s starting point. About the sprint

Why it matters now

The biggest market and the best first market are rarely the same.

A large market where buyers already have a settled answer is expensive to enter. A narrower one, where the need is acute and the alternatives are weak, can often be won with the evidence you have today.

Choosing deliberately makes positioning, sales and proof cheaper. The point of this engagement is to make the choice before the capital is committed.

Questions

On market and opportunity mapping.

Research produces a report; this produces a decision, with the evidence and the trade-offs behind it. It uses research, including buyer interviews where you can arrange them, and says which conclusions are hypotheses.

Then we either confirm it with evidence a board can stand behind, or show you a better-placed opportunity a segment or a geography away. Either outcome de-risks where the next tranche of effort goes.

The sprint assumes the market, the use case and the buyer are chosen. This engagement chooses them.

Questions buyers ask before they ask a firm.

How do AI systems decide which companies to recommend? What is documented, what is inference, and what nobody outside the providers knows.

Choose before you commit.

Twenty minutes on the markets and applications you are weighing. If mapping them is the right next step, we will scope it.

Map your opportunity All engagements

If we can help, you leave with one specific observation about your positioning. If we cannot, we say so.

Other engagements

Where this fits.

Positioning & Evidence SprintFour weeks on one product, one use case and one buying group: a defensible position, with the evidence behind it put to work. AI Search Visibility AuditA repeatable sample of what AI assistants say about you, checked against your approved facts. Positioning & Category StrategyFor a broader repositioning: several products or audiences, or a decision about which category to compete in.