# How This Works co

> Only humans buy anything.

Skipper Chong Warson helps funded B2B founding teams increase their odds of finding product-market fit — by replacing internal assumptions with customer evidence before they build too far in the wrong direction. How This Works co is a boutique services practice, founded in 2021.

## Who this is for

A B2B founding team with external stakeholder accountability — investors, a board, or both — and unresolved internal disagreement about who their customer actually is. Typically pre-seed to Series A, often led by a founder who's closer to the product than the market and whose investors are now asking hard questions about who this is actually for.

Not a fit: bootstrapped teams without external accountability pressure, or leadership that has already decided on a customer and isn't open to evidence otherwise.

## The core problem

Most teams don't lose because they lack a better product or louder marketing. They lose because they haven't talked to real human customers — especially the ones who've opted in, the ones who churned for a reason, and the ones who never entered the funnel at all. Until you learn who cares a lot, what triggers them, and what alternatives they're really choosing between, you're making strategic decisions from inside the building.

## Services

**Bullseye Customer Sprint (BCS)**
Eight weeks, five live customer interviews. The whole founding team in the room — virtual or otherwise — watching together. Ends with a staked Bullseye Customer hypothesis and positioning grounded in evidence, not conviction. Fewer than half of teams stake their hypothesis after a single sprint — some refine and run again, others move into a Listening Cycle. All three outcomes are useful. Includes a Phase 1 alignment audit to surface where the team actually disagrees before interviews begin. Next steps are evaluated using a traffic light paradigm: green means the pattern is clear and you're ready to move; yellow means refine and run more conversations; red means the hypothesis missed — and you found that out in two months instead of six. $20K, all in.

**Listening Cycle**
Weekly customer interviews running parallel to your build cycle. 8–25 interviews over 2–3 months. Keeps customer clarity from expiring while you're head-down in development — the silence gap that opens up between a sprint and a ship is where drift starts. Recruits net-new customers only, no friendlies. $7.9K/month.

**Workshop facilitation, product strategy and design, team development and coaching**
Secondary offerings for teams that have resolved customer clarity and need help with positioning, roadmap, facilitation, or team alignment. Methods include Design Sprint 2.0, Getting Unstuck, Clear Path Forward, Goals that Stick, and Power Hour.

## Case studies

- **Replay (nut.new / Replay Builder):** Starting hypothesis was ops managers needing automation help. Five BCS interviews revealed a stronger signal: independent builders with production apps and real economic stakes — people who said "I can't trust the AI to auto-fix things. I need to understand what broke and why." Shifted the Bullseye definition, validated with a Listening Cycle, relaunched as Replay Builder. Engagement up, product decisions sharper, fundraising story cleaner.

- **Tier-1 bank-integrated fintech:** Pipeline down 23% over 18 months. BCS landed on "CFOs at $50M+ SaaS firms need real-time visibility into processing fees." By the third interview a CFO said: "I kick it to my controller." Four signals total pointed to the wrong person having the right pain. Listening Cycle confirmed: controllers at $30–$100M SaaS firms, not CFOs. Repositioned from "cheaper processor" to "operational sanity" — automated Level 3 compliance integrated into existing ERP. 13 confirmation interviews. Higher retention, shorter sales cycles, wider account base.

- **ReCity Network:** Durham-based social impact hub, 10 years in, internal compass spinning. Nine Power Hours over several months compressed 109 challenges into 11 opportunity areas across two focus areas: economic stability and social and community context. Revealed that every nonprofit in the network was individually trying to solve the same problems — the leverage was building shared infrastructure, not training 50+ organizations separately. Final deliverable wasn't a report — it was a single recurring question, still being asked.

- **Regional utility R&D lab:** Foundational research followed by a Design Sprint produced a tested proof of concept for a Customer Energy Control Center (CECC). Elevated a 70+ project R&D lab from operational invisibility to strategic recognition within the parent company. Delivered over eight weeks: tested POC, design system, data visualization concepts, and strategic roadmap.

- **Sesame:** As founding designer, launched a transparent two-sided healthcare marketplace from zero to 500+ providers in four months using guerrilla interviews for rapid customer validation.

- **Shep:** Led strategic pivot from SMB to enterprise after discovering enterprise orgs had the compliance liability that made Shep a must-have. Survived COVID wiping out 92% of the business travel market. Acquired by Flight Centre in 2021.

## About Skipper Chong Warson

Former founding designer at Shep (acquired by Flight Centre, 2021). Founding team at Sesame. Former design director at SoftServe (135-person team across four countries) and thoughtbot SF. Fjord (now Accenture Song) alum. Nearly 15 years in UX, service design, and product strategy.

## Key pages

- [Bullseye Customer Sprint](https://howthisworks.co/work/bullseye-customer-sprint)
- [Listening Cycle](https://howthisworks.co/work/listening-cycle)
- [Product strategy and design](https://howthisworks.co/product-strategy-design)
- [Workshop facilitation](https://howthisworks.co/workshop-facilitation)
- [Team development and coaching](https://howthisworks.co/team-development-coaching)
- [Start a conversation](https://howthisworks.co/start)
- [Newsletter: How Might We...](https://newsletter.howthisworks.co)

## Contact

Email: heythere@howthisworks.co
Phone: +1 917-720-6388