B2B product strategy & customer discovery
What if every product decision your team made was grounded in what an actual customer told you?
Most teams build on gut feel and good intentions. And those instincts are usually close, but close doesn't close.
Even a small founding team debating who they're building for burns roughly $40K a month in misaligned work. That's not a people problem. That's a signal problem — and silence is expensive. Speed in the wrong direction is a mistake whose price keeps climbing.
Here's what fixing it looks like. The Bullseye Customer Sprint gets you to a staked customer hypothesis in about two (2) months — five (5) live interviews your whole team watches together, no more "I think," just "they said." A Listening Cycle keeps that clarity from expiring while you build — weekly interviews, immediate debriefs, no reports nobody reads.
Only humans buy anything. Stop building for the wrong one.
Book a 25-min intro call — no pitch, just a conversation about where you're at.
Clients & collaborators
Built for teams at
Services
How we help B2B teams move from intuition to evidence
Product strategy & design
Create products customers want using tested methods that turn insights into business results
Workshop facilitation
Turn ideas into action through focused sessions — from our signature Bullseye Customer Sprint to a Listening Cycle to a Design Sprint
Team development & coaching
Build stronger teams that solve problems together through structured coaching and proven frameworks
Here's what it sounds like when a team stops guessing
The How This Works co approach
Moving from founder intuition to evidence-based conviction
We help teams move from founder intuition to evidence-based conviction. The case studies below show what that actually looks like.
Pivoting to survive a market collapse
At Shep, we built a browser extension for business travel compliance. Our first hypothesis — small and medium businesses — failed after a year of iterations: fragmented budgets, impossible unit economics. We pivoted to enterprise. Then COVID killed 92% of business travel overnight. Instead of folding, we went back to listening. Enterprise still had duty of care problems. We retooled around safety and health notifications, piloted with Adidas and Discovery Channel, and Flight Centre acquired Shep in 2021.
Finding the customer with real stakes
Replay's initial hypothesis: ops managers need help building automation apps but a Bullseye Customer Sprint with five (5) discovery/user testing interviews told a different story. The customer who actually buys is an independent builder with a production app (not a test) and real money on the line — someone who needed to understand what broke and why, not just have it auto-fixed. So we shifted the Bullseye hypothesis, validated with a Listening Cycle, and they relaunched as Replay Builder. Specificity creates clarity. Clarity creates focus. Focus creates revenue.
Listening past the CFO
A tier 1 bank-integrated fintech's pipeline had stalled — sales down 23% over 18 months. We ran a Bullseye Customer Sprint targeting CFOs at $50M+ SaaS firms. By the third Listening Cycle interview, a CFO handed us the real answer: "That's an audit problem — I kick it to my controller." Right pain, wrong customer. We repositioned for controllers at $30–$100M firms and ran 13 more interviews to confirm. Higher retention, shorter sales cycles, wider swathe of accounts.
This is a no pitch zone
Tell us where you're at
We'll talk through your situation and be straight about whether our approach makes sense
Insights & perspectives
Stories on customer discovery and product strategy
- "Um, shit," I said
- While I was gone — apparently, I've been running experiments this whole time
- Mixtape Friday: Stay as long as you want • Volume 006 Winter 2026
- The $400 method that saved Sesame’s launch, a healthcare startup
- How talking to 10 customers over two (2) weeks unlocked $2M for a Fortune 500 co
- The confidence that comes after dressing up in a giant hoop skirt
- 82 responses, three (3) interviews, and a single wasted week
Stories and conversations on customer discovery, product strategy, facilitation, and the messy middle of building and making right now — including the How This Works show.
Phone: +1 917-720-6388
Email: heythere@howthisworks.co
Book a call: howthisworks.co/start
Based in San Francisco, CA, working globally
How This Works show, our podcast
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Weekly-ish dispatches on customer discovery and product strategy — sensemaking from inside the work and from home, with AI in the mix
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