The Temptation to Build First
An executive coach with 25 years of experience in Big Tech came to Socrú with a clear idea: she wanted to build a mobile app to help corporate professionals set and track their goals and avoid becoming ‘stuck’ in their careers. With her deep background in technology, her natural instinct was to solve the problem by building a product.
When you are passionate about helping people, it is incredibly easy to fall in love with your own idea and want to start building it immediately. But as any founder knows, there is often a big gap between a great concept and what people will actually use in their daily lives.
Before she spent money on software development, Socrú gave her a gentle nudge to take a step back. We suggested pausing the app build to do a market benchmark analysis and basic user research first, making sure any future tech investment was backed by genuine user demand rather than just a good hunch.
Step 1: The Market Benchmark and The Pivot
Instead of writing code, we started by looking at the market. We reviewed existing tools to see what worked well and where the gaps were. We observed that the market was already quite saturated, and the most prominent tools were backed by highly academic, deeply researched frameworks that would require a huge upfront investment from the founder.
As we began speaking with potential participants and filtering for our ideal research group, it became clear that people didn’t have a strong desire for a self-guided app to track their goals. Instead, they preferred a more hands-on and personalised approach.
This observation about the state of the market, combined with the early user feedback, brought a powerful realisation. Instead of a heavy app, the data pointed to a much more lightweight and straight forward solution: a quick, web-based diagnostic survey. This would take users just a few minutes to fill out, giving them immediate insight into their own situation while naturally bringing interested people into the founder’s client pipeline.
By catching this before any development started, the founder saved a significant amount of time and money that would have potentially been wasted on developing a tool that didn’t have a clear demand.
Step 2: Deep User Research to Build the Tool
To build this diagnostic survey effectively, we needed to understand the different “user archetypes” and what it actually feels like to be stuck.
We sat down for ten open, honest conversations with professionals who felt paralysed in their careers. We then synthesised these detailed personal stories into a clear, strategic report that mapped out the common patterns in their experiences.
What We Learned
By listening to real human stories, we uncovered the insights needed to build the diagnostic survey and help the founder truly connect with her audience:
- The Words They Actually Use: We put together a “Pain Dictionary”—a simple list of the exact words and physical feelings people used to describe being stuck. Instead of using formal coaching jargon, she can now use their real language in the diagnostic survey and on her website so people instantly feel understood.
- Why People Hesitate to Get Help: We uncovered the hidden reasons why someone might look at a coach and walk away—like feeling too overwhelmed to take on one more task, or feeling too embarrassed to admit they are struggling. Knowing these barriers allows her to shape the survey’s results to feel safe and welcoming.
- The DIY Traps: We mapped out how these professionals try to fix things on their own, like building massive spreadsheets that eventually collapse. The founder now has a clear idea of what a potential client has likely tried, and how frustrating it is to carry that weight alone, allowing her to meet them with genuine empathy.
The Big Picture
By taking the time to pause and listen, the founder didn’t just save time and money; she gained total clarity on who her clients are and how to talk to them. She walked away with the deep insights needed to move forward and map out a clear business vision and strategy grounded in real user needs. This allows her to launch with confidence today, knowing she is meeting a genuine market demand, while keeping a clear, step-by-step plan to introduce digital tools down the road when the time is right.
This kind of clarity is exactly the feeling we want our clients to have at the end of our engagement, so they can move forward with confidence on the road ahead.
