Product design before Series A · Seed to Series A
The deck says Series A. The product still reads as a prototype. We find the gap between the two, and put a price on closing it, before the next partner meeting.
Book a 30-minute callThe pitch went well. The partner asked for a login.
That evening, somewhere you cannot see, they sign up as a new user. They do not have your walkthrough or your voice-over. They have an empty dashboard, a setup step that wants an integration, and roughly the patience of anyone at the end of a long day.
A week later the feedback arrives, and it is polite. “We’d like to keep watching you.” Nobody mentions the empty dashboard, but that was the meeting that mattered.
The usual plan before a raise is to polish the deck and let the product catch up after the money lands. It feels efficient. It also assumes investors stop at the deck.
They do not. After the pitch they open the product and check whether a new user reaches value in the first session. Then they look at the number behind that first session: activation, trial-to-paid, onboarding completion.
The product should tell the same story as the deck. When it does not, the deck loses, and nobody tells you that was the reason.
The product does something impressive, but only after setup, after an import, after a second session most users never start.
The steps made sense when every early user had met the founder. A new user, or an investor, has not.
Features were added to win the first customers, and nobody went back to shorten the paths between them.
The rate in the deck is from the last update. The product has changed since then.
More features rarely close this gap. Less friction usually does.
At this stage there is no marketing budget to measure a design fee against. The right comparison is the round itself.
So we ask every pre-Series A founder the same thing: if the round takes two months longer than planned because investors hesitate at the product, what does that cost you? You know the dilution math better than we do. Put it next to a two-week Sprint and the decision usually makes itself, in one direction or the other.
Illustrative inputs, so swap in your own:
trials a month, $ ACV
Trial-to-paid at %, category benchmark %
We never plan for closing the whole gap. A defensible target closes 30 to 50% of it: 11.5% to 12.5%.
Annual gap = (target rate − current rate) × monthly volume × value per unit × 12
1.5 to 2.5 points × 400 × $6,000 × 12 = $432,000 to $720,000 in new ARR a year
That is $36,000 to $60,000 of new ARR a month. Two extra months of fundraising at that gap is $72,000 to $120,000 you never added. It is a line on the next board slide, not a design opinion.
Try your own numbers in the conversion gap calculator.
If an investor opened your product right now, without you there to explain it, what would they see in the first two minutes?
Do you know your activation rate this month, or only the one from your last deck?
If it is the second, start with where users stall after signup.
Is your roadmap about to change under the product?
If a pivot or a major rebuild is weeks away, hold the budget. Fix the product you will still be showing in three months.
If none of this sounds like you yet, keep this page. It will be more useful in a year.
Bring the deck and a login. A principal tells you what an investor is likely to see in the first two minutes.
Your metric against its benchmark, with the source named, every fix ranked by effort with a conservative ARR figure, and the scope for what comes next. €5,500 to €8,500, with a written guarantee.
GENESIS for Pre-Seed and Seed teams makes the product tell the story the round needs. EVOLUTION for Series A and B teams overhauls the product against the metric the Sprint priced.
Every two weeks you get one defined output and a recorded walkthrough. Forward it to the investor who asked about progress.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| You demo the product with a voice-over that explains things away | The product makes the point without you in the room |
| The deck quotes last quarter’s rate | You know this month’s number and the benchmark beside it |
| “The product needs work” | A ranked list of fixes, each with an ARR figure |
| Feedback says “we’d like to keep watching you” | You can answer the product question before it is asked |
The two principals on your first call do the work. There is no 3 to 6 month hiring cycle, and senior output starts in week one.
Co-founder, Head of Product Strategy and Design
MSc in computer engineering, 10+ years in systems and product design.
Co-founder, Design and Communication Principal
20+ years designing for startups and scale-ups, across product design, UX strategy and front-end.
Before a raise, nothing about the product should be public that you did not choose to make public. A mutual NDA comes before any sensitive conversation. How that works.
No. Some of the founders we work with are pre-launch and building toward a raise.
The Sprint takes two weeks. Tell us the date on the call and we will tell you honestly what fits before it.
No studio can promise that. What we can show you is what an investor sees in the product and what closing the gap is worth, in numbers you can put in the deck.
Start with the number. If the metric is below benchmark, the deck cannot argue around it. If the metric is strong and the product hides it, that is a design problem.
The Clarity Sprint costs €5,500 to €6,500, or €8,500 with a technical architecture review. The fee is credited in full if you continue within 90 days.
Bring the deck and a login. We will tell you what an investor sees in the first two minutes.