Saving a €500K Mistake Before It Happened
A 40-person eCommerce SaaS company was ready to invest a year of development resources into a new product for a new segment - based on assumptions they were about to cost them everything.
The Context
Growth had stalled. Their core market was saturated, and ARR was flatlining.
The answer seemed obvious: expand into a new segment with a new product.
Sales and marketing had spent a year "validating" this opportunity.
They'd talked to 50+ prospects, built business cases, mapped competitor landscapes.
Leadership was split—half believed the hype, half had doubts but couldn't articulate why.
They brought me in to settle the debate before committing resources.
The Problem
Everyone was operating on different definitions of success.
Sales thought success meant "5 beta customers in Year 1."
Product thought success meant "generating €X ARR within 18 months."
Leadership thought success meant "proving we can diversify revenue streams."
But no one had asked the only question that mattered:
Do customers in this segment have a problem painful enough to pay for?
Sales and marketing had done "customer validation"—but they'd asked leading questions like "Would you use this?" instead of uncovering real pain. They'd built a house of cards on assumptions, confirmation bias, and wishful thinking.
If they launched, they'd burn 12+ months of runway building something nobody would buy.
What I did:
✓ Mapped the chaos → Conducted in-depth sessions with sales, marketing, product, and C-level to understand what each team believed and why (uncovered that everyone was working from different assumptions)
✓ Defined success criteria → Facilitated a workshop to align leadership on what "success" actually meant: revenue targets, customer acquisition goals, and acceptable risk levels
✓ Audited the "validation" → Reviewed all sales/marketing research and immediately spotted red flags: fabricated pain points, cherry-picked data, and leading questions that confirmed what they wanted to hear
✓ Ran real customer discovery → Conducted 10 interviews with their "ideal customer profile" using open-ended questions to uncover actual pain (not hypothetical interest)
✓ Delivered the hard truth at mid-point → Told leadership the first ICP didn't have the pain they thought—customers complained about the problem, but weren't doing anything to solve it (a clear signal they wouldn't pay)
✓ Tested a pivot → Worked with the team to identify a second ICP, ran 10 more interviews, and tested price sensitivity (again: not enough pain to justify the price point)
✓ Built the strategic roadmap → Delivered a comprehensive deck with:
Real customer personas based on evidence (not assumptions)
A brutally honest evaluation of the sales-led validation approach and why it failed
Alternative opportunities based on actual customer pain I'd uncovered
A clear recommendation: Don't build this. Pivot.
The Outcome
In a C-level workshop I facilitated, leadership made the call: Kill the project.
They stopped the bleeding before it started—saving 12 months of wasted dev time, preserving team morale, and freeing up resources to pursue better opportunities.
More importantly, they learned a system for validating ideas before committing resources—a process they could repeat for every future bet.
The hard numbers:
Avoided wasting an estimated €500K+ in dev costs and opportunity cost
Pivoted to a validated opportunity that generated revenue within 6 months
Gave leadership confidence to make tough decisions based on evidence, not politics
The Lesson:
In a C-level workshop I facilitated, leadership made the call: Kill the project.
They stopped the bleeding before it started—saving 12 months of wasted dev time, preserving team morale, and freeing up resources to pursue better opportunities.
More importantly, they learned a system for validating ideas before committing resources—a process they could repeat for every future bet.
The hard numbers:
Avoided wasting an estimated €500K+ in dev costs and opportunity cost
Pivoted to a validated opportunity that generated revenue within 6 months
Gave leadership confidence to make tough decisions based on evidence, not politics
More Projects
Saving a €500K Mistake Before It Happened
A 40-person eCommerce SaaS company was ready to invest a year of development resources into a new product for a new segment - based on assumptions they were about to cost them everything.
The Context
Growth had stalled. Their core market was saturated, and ARR was flatlining.
The answer seemed obvious: expand into a new segment with a new product.
Sales and marketing had spent a year "validating" this opportunity.
They'd talked to 50+ prospects, built business cases, mapped competitor landscapes.
Leadership was split—half believed the hype, half had doubts but couldn't articulate why.
They brought me in to settle the debate before committing resources.
The Problem
Everyone was operating on different definitions of success.
Sales thought success meant "5 beta customers in Year 1."
Product thought success meant "generating €X ARR within 18 months."
Leadership thought success meant "proving we can diversify revenue streams."
But no one had asked the only question that mattered:
Do customers in this segment have a problem painful enough to pay for?
Sales and marketing had done "customer validation"—but they'd asked leading questions like "Would you use this?" instead of uncovering real pain. They'd built a house of cards on assumptions, confirmation bias, and wishful thinking.
If they launched, they'd burn 12+ months of runway building something nobody would buy.
What I did:
✓ Mapped the chaos → Conducted in-depth sessions with sales, marketing, product, and C-level to understand what each team believed and why (uncovered that everyone was working from different assumptions)
✓ Defined success criteria → Facilitated a workshop to align leadership on what "success" actually meant: revenue targets, customer acquisition goals, and acceptable risk levels
✓ Audited the "validation" → Reviewed all sales/marketing research and immediately spotted red flags: fabricated pain points, cherry-picked data, and leading questions that confirmed what they wanted to hear
✓ Ran real customer discovery → Conducted 10 interviews with their "ideal customer profile" using open-ended questions to uncover actual pain (not hypothetical interest)
✓ Delivered the hard truth at mid-point → Told leadership the first ICP didn't have the pain they thought—customers complained about the problem, but weren't doing anything to solve it (a clear signal they wouldn't pay)
✓ Tested a pivot → Worked with the team to identify a second ICP, ran 10 more interviews, and tested price sensitivity (again: not enough pain to justify the price point)
✓ Built the strategic roadmap → Delivered a comprehensive deck with:
Real customer personas based on evidence (not assumptions)
A brutally honest evaluation of the sales-led validation approach and why it failed
Alternative opportunities based on actual customer pain I'd uncovered
A clear recommendation: Don't build this. Pivot.
The Outcome
In a C-level workshop I facilitated, leadership made the call: Kill the project.
They stopped the bleeding before it started—saving 12 months of wasted dev time, preserving team morale, and freeing up resources to pursue better opportunities.
More importantly, they learned a system for validating ideas before committing resources—a process they could repeat for every future bet.
The hard numbers:
Avoided wasting an estimated €500K+ in dev costs and opportunity cost
Pivoted to a validated opportunity that generated revenue within 6 months
Gave leadership confidence to make tough decisions based on evidence, not politics
The Lesson:
In a C-level workshop I facilitated, leadership made the call: Kill the project.
They stopped the bleeding before it started—saving 12 months of wasted dev time, preserving team morale, and freeing up resources to pursue better opportunities.
More importantly, they learned a system for validating ideas before committing resources—a process they could repeat for every future bet.
The hard numbers:
Avoided wasting an estimated €500K+ in dev costs and opportunity cost
Pivoted to a validated opportunity that generated revenue within 6 months
Gave leadership confidence to make tough decisions based on evidence, not politics
More Projects
Saving a €500K Mistake Before It Happened
A 40-person eCommerce SaaS company was ready to invest a year of development resources into a new product for a new segment - based on assumptions they were about to cost them everything.
The Context
Growth had stalled. Their core market was saturated, and ARR was flatlining.
The answer seemed obvious: expand into a new segment with a new product.
Sales and marketing had spent a year "validating" this opportunity.
They'd talked to 50+ prospects, built business cases, mapped competitor landscapes.
Leadership was split—half believed the hype, half had doubts but couldn't articulate why.
They brought me in to settle the debate before committing resources.
The Problem
Everyone was operating on different definitions of success.
Sales thought success meant "5 beta customers in Year 1."
Product thought success meant "generating €X ARR within 18 months."
Leadership thought success meant "proving we can diversify revenue streams."
But no one had asked the only question that mattered:
Do customers in this segment have a problem painful enough to pay for?
Sales and marketing had done "customer validation"—but they'd asked leading questions like "Would you use this?" instead of uncovering real pain. They'd built a house of cards on assumptions, confirmation bias, and wishful thinking.
If they launched, they'd burn 12+ months of runway building something nobody would buy.
What I did:
✓ Mapped the chaos → Conducted in-depth sessions with sales, marketing, product, and C-level to understand what each team believed and why (uncovered that everyone was working from different assumptions)
✓ Defined success criteria → Facilitated a workshop to align leadership on what "success" actually meant: revenue targets, customer acquisition goals, and acceptable risk levels
✓ Audited the "validation" → Reviewed all sales/marketing research and immediately spotted red flags: fabricated pain points, cherry-picked data, and leading questions that confirmed what they wanted to hear
✓ Ran real customer discovery → Conducted 10 interviews with their "ideal customer profile" using open-ended questions to uncover actual pain (not hypothetical interest)
✓ Delivered the hard truth at mid-point → Told leadership the first ICP didn't have the pain they thought—customers complained about the problem, but weren't doing anything to solve it (a clear signal they wouldn't pay)
✓ Tested a pivot → Worked with the team to identify a second ICP, ran 10 more interviews, and tested price sensitivity (again: not enough pain to justify the price point)
✓ Built the strategic roadmap → Delivered a comprehensive deck with:
Real customer personas based on evidence (not assumptions)
A brutally honest evaluation of the sales-led validation approach and why it failed
Alternative opportunities based on actual customer pain I'd uncovered
A clear recommendation: Don't build this. Pivot.
The Outcome
In a C-level workshop I facilitated, leadership made the call: Kill the project.
They stopped the bleeding before it started—saving 12 months of wasted dev time, preserving team morale, and freeing up resources to pursue better opportunities.
More importantly, they learned a system for validating ideas before committing resources—a process they could repeat for every future bet.
The hard numbers:
Avoided wasting an estimated €500K+ in dev costs and opportunity cost
Pivoted to a validated opportunity that generated revenue within 6 months
Gave leadership confidence to make tough decisions based on evidence, not politics
The Lesson:
In a C-level workshop I facilitated, leadership made the call: Kill the project.
They stopped the bleeding before it started—saving 12 months of wasted dev time, preserving team morale, and freeing up resources to pursue better opportunities.
More importantly, they learned a system for validating ideas before committing resources—a process they could repeat for every future bet.
The hard numbers:
Avoided wasting an estimated €500K+ in dev costs and opportunity cost
Pivoted to a validated opportunity that generated revenue within 6 months
Gave leadership confidence to make tough decisions based on evidence, not politics