Growth foundations sprint
Groundwork to refine product positioning, update look and feel and set up a hypothesis validation engine
The challenge
What you see
Retention and activation: about 20 paying users come in per week and about the same number leave — so there’s essentially no growth. There’s no systematic marketing work, the budget is under $10k per month, and experiments so far have been scattered.
What we see
- Lack of confidence in understanding the key customer segments and their underserved jobs-to-be-done,
- the criteria and context for choosing a solution for those jobs,
- the real competitive landscape, and
- positioning that would allow it to win the competitive battle and achieve solid traction.
How we'll approach it
Three principles run under the whole sprint. They keep the work fast and the bets connected, instead of five tactics pulling in different directions.
One connected chain
JTBD → ICP → Activation moment → Problems → Competition. Each link sets up the next, so the work compounds. Confirm one bet and the rest sharpen; disprove one and everything downstream reprioritizes.
Everything is a hypothesis
Positioning, identity, the site — bets to test, not truths to polish and defend. Our job is to find the hypothesis most likely to lead us to success, and test that one first.
Minimum Awesome Product
We don't sand the brand and the site to a mirror finish before they've earned it. We ship something already good enough to put in front of real people, learn, and move to the next hypothesis.
What we'll do
This is a Growth Foundation Sprint, an MVP of what proper work on making the brand a growth lever and defensible competitive moat might look like. The heavy full-version modules sit out, but we can always build on that later, turning it into the growth flywheel.
- ~5 weeks
- async
- one round of edits
- swift feedback, fast iterations, incremental build
- AI-native
- Phase 1
Project kick-off
We digest what you already have and treat it as default knowledge, not something to challenge
- Sales calls
- Product and marketing analytics
- Customer interviews
- The JTBDs you’ve defined
- Phase 2
Brand strategy & platform
A series of workshops to define the key parts of the brand platform and positioning
- Brand platform: vision, mission, values, audiences, competitive advantage, promise, reasons to believe, brand personality.
- Positioning (1-pager): category, value proposition, difference, who it's for.
- ICP through jobs: who to drive in, and when.
- Phase 3
Brand system
Strategy becomes verbal and visual
- Messaging House (Universal): one-liner, elevator pitch, value themes, Tone of Voice base.
- Brand identity: logo for digital use, typography system, iconography and illustration direction if agreed.
- AI-native design system: enough for your team and its agents to keep the brand consistent without us.
- Phase 4
Creative production
The website and brand assets users and the investor meet before Silicon Valley, built on our AI-native stack from templates and components
- Main landing page.
- Assembly of all core components into an AI-native design system in Figma.
- Responsive behaviors.
- Brand assets: LinkedIn post, profile header images, email signature, Zoom backgrounds.
- Final QA and refinements.
Investment & timeline
Fixed price · ~5 weeks, ready before your trip to Silicon Valley.
Payment schedule
50% down payment, 50% after the work is complete. Price excludes VAT.
Brands we've transformed
RealtimeBoard → Miro
Full rebrand and brand architecture for the move to Miro — a new name, identity, and platform story that scaled into a category leader.
Stape → Kleos
New name, new repositioning, and a new identity for a global team-management platform previously known as Stape → now Kleos.
Sidekick (acquired by Perplexity)
A repositioning sharp enough to make the browser grow organically 5x a year, competing with Google Chrome and becoming an acquisition target for Perplexity.
Next step
A deep-dive call to discuss proposal details, confirm the scope and lock a start date so the finish lands before your first meetings in Silicon Valley.
yegor@backspaceoddity.com