Product strategy & MVP planning
Most failed builds die in the two weeks before code
The usual causes are unbounded scope, a backlog ranked by opinion, and developers hired before anyone wrote anything down. We sell that fortnight as a product: a fixed-price planning sprint that hands you everything a build team needs, credited toward the build if you do it with us.
Planning vs. rework
The cost of building the wrong thing
Here is the same product run two ways: once with no planning phase, and once with five days of it up front.
- Month 1–3A dev shop quotes off a call. Building starts against a moving target; every founder idea becomes a mid-sprint change request.
- Month 4–6The demo doesn't match the vision and rework begins. The relationship sours over whose fault the ambiguity was, when the cause is that nothing was written down.
- Month 7+A second team is hired to rebuild “properly.” The first spend is written off.
A $40k+ rebuild
plus six months of runway, spent proving the scope was never defined
- Week 1The Planning Sprint. Scope gets a boundary, the backlog gets an order, the architecture gets options with trade-offs, and the build gets an estimate based on written scope.
- Month 1–3The build executes against acceptance criteria instead of memory. Change requests still happen, but each one is decided against a written baseline.
- Month 4+Version one ships as scoped. The roadmap already says what release two must prove. The sprint fee was credited against the build anyway.
$1,500, credited toward the build
five days of planning, finished before anyone writes code
MVP Planning Sprint: $1,500, 5 days
What an MVP scope looks like, document by document
A working set of documents your build team, ours or anyone else’s, executes against. Every artifact below arrives finished at the end of the five days.
Problem & outcome definition
What you're solving, for whom, and what “working” measurably means. Every later decision gets tested against it.
User journeys & flow maps
Every path a user takes from first open to core habit, drawn out, including the unhappy paths most founders never think about until support tickets arrive.
MVP scope & prioritized backlog
A hard boundary around version one, and a backlog ordered by evidence, effort and risk.
Release roadmap
What ships when, in what order, and what each release is designed to prove before you fund the next one.
Architecture options & risks
Two to three viable build approaches with their trade-offs in cost, speed and lock-in, plus the delivery risks we'd flag if we were spending your money.
Acceptance criteria & build estimate
Pass/fail definitions for every scoped feature, and a build estimate based on all of the above.
The sprint takes five days and costs $1,500, credited in full toward the build. If we build your product, the planning costs you nothing extra. If someone else builds it, they start from a written scope.
Start the sprintFor healthtech & mental-health founders
The Healthtech & Mental Health MVP Blueprint
Health products carry a question regular apps don’t: which parts of this can we ship now, and which parts need specialists before anyone touches them? Founders who can’t answer it either freeze and build nothing, or barrel ahead and build the regulated parts by accident.
The Blueprint is the full Planning Sprint plus the mapping that answers that question. We draw the boundary between what you can ship now and what needs qualified legal, clinical, security or regulatory specialists, so your MVP stays on the shippable side and the roadmap shows where each specialist gate sits.
The Blueprint is planning. It is not legal advice, a clinical opinion or regulatory sign-off; it maps where those specialists are required and when.
Intended-use boundary
A written line between what your product does and what it must never claim to do. This is what keeps a wellness app from drifting into being an unregistered medical device.
Sensitive-data & claims inventory
Every piece of health-adjacent data you'd collect and every claim your marketing wants to make, catalogued, so you know which ones are free and which ones carry obligations.
Crisis & clinical dependency map
Where your product could touch crisis situations, clinical decisions or provider workflows, and how the MVP routes around those paths until specialists approve them.
Specialist decision points
The points in your roadmap where a privacy lawyer, clinician, security assessor or regulatory consultant must be engaged, named and sequenced so you can budget for them in advance.
One gap? Fill one gap.
Every sprint artifact, available on its own
Some teams only need one missing document. Each one below has a fixed price and can be bought on its own.
Product planning workshop
90 minutes + written notes, for founders with a handful of open decisions.
RequestProblem statement & MVP scope
Turn an idea or a feature list into a bounded, buildable version one.
RequestUser journeys & flow maps
The experience drawn end to end before anyone designs or builds it.
RequestFeature prioritization & release roadmap
Your backlog re-ranked by goals, evidence, effort and risk, then laid out as releases.
RequestPRD / requirements document
Functional requirements, acceptance criteria, dependencies, assumptions, and out-of-scope calls.
RequestTechnical discovery & architecture options
Build approaches, integration map, risks and an estimate, before you commit to anything.
RequestAnalytics & measurement plan
Events, funnels, KPIs and experiment design, so launch week produces answers.
RequestWhen planning never stops
A product lead and a CTO, without the two salaries
Fractional product planning
Roadmap kept current, requirements written before every build cycle, backlog re-prioritized against evidence, releases planned with acceptance criteria, delivery coordinated. The product-lead function for teams between first build and first product hire.
Talk about fitFractional CTO
Senior technical judgment on retainer: architecture decisions, vendor and hiring calls, technical due-diligence readiness, and someone who can look a dev shop's estimate in the eye. Built for funded startups with non-technical founders.
Talk about fitFAQ
Planning sprint questions
I already know what I want to build. Why pay for planning?
Because “I know what I want” and “a developer can build it without guessing” are different things. The sprint turns your vision into artifacts a build team can execute against: scoped features, acceptance criteria, a prioritized backlog, and architecture options with trade-offs. Without them, the same decisions still get made, later, as rework billed at build rates.
What happens after the sprint? Am I locked into building with you?
No. Every deliverable is written so any competent team can build from it. If you build with us, the full sprint fee is credited toward the build. If you take it to another agency or an in-house team, you own everything and lose nothing.
Is the Healthtech Blueprint a compliance certification?
No, and we state that in writing. The Blueprint maps your intended-use boundary, sensitive-data and claims inventory, and the points where qualified legal, clinical, security or regulatory specialists must be brought in. It shows where the boundary is without certifying which side of it you're on. That sign-off belongs to specialists, and the Blueprint names which ones you need and when.
Can I buy just one document instead of the full sprint?
Yes. Every artifact in the sprint is available standalone: a PRD at $799, user journeys at $399, technical discovery at $999, and so on. The documents are stronger when they're built together in one focused week, but if you only have one gap, fill only that gap.
What does fractional product planning look like month to month?
A standing cadence: roadmap and backlog kept current, requirements written before each build cycle, releases planned with acceptance criteria, and priorities re-checked against evidence. It's the product-lead function at $1,500–$3,000/mo instead of a $150k hire, and it's most useful between your first build and your first product hire.
How technical do I need to be to get value from this?
Not at all. Most of the founders we plan with are non-technical. Every document is written in plain language first, with the technical depth beneath it for whoever builds. The architecture options doc, for instance, gives you the trade-offs in business terms: cost, speed, lock-in, and what each choice makes harder later.
Where planning leads
What usually comes next
Work with us
Spend five days before you spend fifty thousand
Send a few lines on what you're building and where it's stuck. We'll recommend the smallest piece that gets you moving, whether that's the full sprint or the $249 workshop.