Validate or Fail Fast

Direct user feedback is your best friend. Learn how to improve your feedback loops.

thoughtbot graphic featured photos of Dawn Delatte and Jordyn Bonds with text reading: Ask us anything about Research & Strategic Insights, Recording Now Live

Video

Research & Strategic Insights Ask Me Anything Webinar

thoughtbot product strategy leaders discuss how to use research & validation to make the product best decisions and outline a concrete action plan.

Dawn Delatte, Managing Director and Jordyn Bonds, Director of Product Strategy

thoughtbot graphic with a definition of validation as learning

Blog

Validation: The best tool to de-risk and inspire

Why validating your identified need and proposed product solution will save you time, money, and sleepless nights.

Director of Product Strategy, Jordyn Bonds

Images of Abwaab learning platform on laptop and mobile screens

Case Study

Delivering high-quality online education across West Asia & North Africa

Helping an online learning platform in the MENA region to deliver a unique and engaging student experience

thoughtbot

Blog

Product Management Ask Me Anything - Event recap

Summarizing all the gems shared by our Product Management team on product strategy and great teamwork.

Kelly Gebo, Associate Director at thoughtbot

Video screenshot of The cost of living crisis and what it means for technology and inset of Kelly Gebo

Blog

Our strategy for B2C founders during the cost of living crisis

Based on nearly 20 years of experience, thoughtbot’s suggestions for successful B2C product strategy during an economic downturn.

Kirsten Hurley, Managing Director, Launchpad II team

Blog

thoughtbot's new Research & Strategy Playbook

Sharing some of our best learnings from thoughtbot's work to research an idea and create a solution or product strategy

thoughtbot team

Image of SumIt persona map that identified where to target services

Blog

Co-Founder interview with SumIt

SumIt—a money management platform for freelancers and self-employed folks—undertook research & strategy work with thoughtbot's Ignite team to validate the right target audience and user needs before building a Beta version of their product.

Kelly Gebo, Associate Director at thoughtbot

laptop showing an image of a globe and a magnifying glass highlighting the West Asia region of the world

Blog

Learnings from our work in West Asia

Regional and cultural learnings from thoughtbot's work with a West-Asian-based food and beverage company.

Rob Whittaker, Rakesh Arunachalam, Jared Turner, Sami Birnbaum, Kelly Gebo & Ferdia Kenny

Image of a slide from the Product Design Sprint workshop

Video

Strategies for upfront product validation

Entrepreneurs can get a leg up using our Design Sprint activities to help align on the most important elements of product strategy and quickly translate those into the right product roadmap.

thoughtbot

Blog

Why Your Prototype Isn't Securing Investment

If you’re serious about raising money, a prototype is an important part of telling your story, but only if your prototype is high quality and based upon validation, feature prioritization, and strong development strategy. Here Associate Director Kelly Gebo shares some best practices we commonly bring to founders to help build a prototype that can truly raise investment.

Kelly Gebo, Associate Director at thoughtbot

Case Study

Validating a market and accelerating patient care

Relias wanted to help post acute-care patients and their therapists get better at physical therapy by creating a tool for patients and therapists to manage exercise assignments and progress. thoughtbot helped them validate the target audience for the patient mobile app, and contributed to more agile workflows for their in-house team.

thoughtbot

Blog

Solving the Prototype Puzzle

Curious what you can expect from a product prototype? Here is how we suggest getting the most out of a prototyping effort.

Kelly Gebo, Associate Director, thoughtbot

Blog

User Research in Healthcare

How to navigate sensitive conversations during user testing in healthcare, health tech, and beyond!

Kelly McCann, designer at thoughtbot

Case Study

Developing a healthcare credentialing software, brand, and technical team in just 7 weeks

Silversheet had 3 main credentialing pain points they wished to solve for: identifying which documents were required, managing large amounts of paperwork, and making sure documents were up to date.

Silversheet

Podcast

Have a Slide for That

Alec Stern, startup founder, entrepreneur, mentor, investor, and advisor, discusses founding Constant Contact, the early days of SaaS, the importance and utilization of 'channels', and pursuing customer feedback.

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Podcast

Building Hundreds of Products with Chad Pytel

Chad, developer and CEO of thoughtbot, shares his thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of consulting vs building scalable SaaS products, how he grew thoughtbot, and the lessons he's learned from 15 years as a first-time founder.

Indie Hackers Podcast

Video

The Value of Honesty

Managing Director Josh Clayton explains the value of honesty when working with clients

Josh Clayton, Managing Director at thoughtbot

Founder Leon Johnson discusses his app, Lightswap

Video

Building a New Crypto App to Pitch Investors

Founder Leon Johnson discusses feature prioritization of his MVP.

Case Study

Transforming a vision and algorithms into a customer-ready product.

Co-founders validate their consumer-focused energy app, while learning the ins and outs of product design and development

Blog

How to Define and Prioritize Features for your MVP

You have the idea and a long list of features. It's time to learn from feedback and iterate your way to success.

Adrian Rogowski, Product Manager, thoughtbot

Case Study

Thoughtful testing drives growth

Usability tests and A/B tests result in improved customer conversion for Lola

People researching and planning for their MVP

Blog

Before you MVP

There's basic yet invaluable research needed to reduce the risk of failure before building your first MVP.

Emily Bahna, Managing Director, thoughtbot

Video

Product Design Sprint - 5 Phase Breakdown

Boston Design Director Jaclyn Perrone walks through all 5 days of the product design sprint process so you can quickly validate your MVP

Jaclyn Perrone, Design Director at thoughtbot

Podcast

186: Learning Through Experimentation (Ryan Buckley)

The co-founder of content startup, Scripted, talks about shifting their product model to a marketplace through direct and indirect user feedback.

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Blog

When to Approach a Digital Consultancy

Examples of three unique startups and when they opted to use a digital product consultancy to validate and/or build their product.

Laurie Young and Sandra Donskyte

Podcast

254: Product and Vision (Chris Savage & Brendan Schwartz)

The founders of video hosting and analytics startup, Wistia, discuss the challenges of building and launching new products

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Podcast

250: The Internet of Payments (Anders Brownworth)

Chief Evangelist from payments app startup, Circle, talks about how they've ventured into building a blockchain product.

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Podcast

186: Learning Through Experimentation (Ryan Buckley)

The co-founder of content startup, Scripted, talks about shifting their product model to a marketplace through direct and indirect user feedback.

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Podcast

170: Make Things People Want (C. Todd Lombardo & Trace Wax)

The co-authors discuss their guidebook for building great digital products and share some real-life stories of invalidating product ideas.

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Blog

User Testing Gone Wild: A Guide to Course Correction

How to expect the unexpected and plan accordingly when conducting usability testing for your product.

Jaclyn Perrone, Design Director at thoughtbot

Blog

Ethnographic Research Exercise

Tips for achieving a deeper understanding of the people your product will touch, in order to build something meaningful.

Jeff Smith, Designer

Podcast

Human to human connection

CEO and co-founder of Drift and former Chief Product Officer at Hubspot, David Cancel, talks about how they approached the earliest iterations of Drift during the testing and validation days.

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Video

Taking a marketplace app from concept to MVP to rapid growth

How non-technical founders took their fitness app to market

Topics

De-risk Your Business

Increase your likelihood of success by addressing big risks quickly and thoroughly.

Learn more about De-risking →

Accelerate time to market

Take advantage of opportunities to get your product into new users’ hands quickly.

Learn more about time to market →

Ensure Product Quality

Build for quality and you build for customer (and employee) loyalty.

Learn more about ensuring product quality →