This is my own business run through the framework I teach. Not an example I made up for class: the actual prototype, the actual feedback, the parts I got wrong, and the change that made people recognise themselves in what I was offering.

I am putting it here because a case study of someone else's product is easy to nod along to. This one has my mistakes in it.

The prototype: a landing page and a video

I started where I tell students to start, with something that communicates the idea rather than something built. A landing page covering the pain points, the benefits, the curriculum and the FAQs, plus an explainer video where I talked about my background and the course.

The pitch at that point was about teaching "app leadership": taking non-technical founders from idea to launch through structured learning. Then I put it on LinkedIn to see who came.

What the first round of applications told me

People applied, and about a third of them were engineers and product managers, which was not who I had designed it for.

I had put questions on the application form about people's backgrounds, their challenges and their goals, so the applications themselves became research. Two things came out of it:

There was real demand for guidance, from people at very different starting points. And my value proposition was too vague. "Learn about software processes" and "be empowered to make decisions" are knowledge statements. They describe a category, not a change in someone's life.

This did not prove product-market fit. The early LinkedIn audience was not exactly my target market. It got me closer, because it showed me who was interested and why.

Pitching it out loud, which is where the problems showed

I talked about it in ordinary conversations, did mock pitches, and thought through what it would look like as YouTube content.

What I learned was mostly about me. I was explaining too much before getting to the point. The language was wordy and technical in places. The structure made sense to people who already knew the space, and it was not transformative enough for anyone else.

The useful part: my background gave me credibility when I led with empathy rather than with credentials.

Researching the market, and the word that changed everything

Then I went and looked properly: what people were saying in the places they actually talk, which terms they used, and how other people in adjacent spaces positioned themselves.

The single most useful thing I found was about vocabulary. Coming from the technical world, the word for what I do is product strategy. As I talked to people I realised that the people I want to serve, early founders, do not use the word product. They do not know the word product. I could not find them at all, until I saw early founders asking for help with their app strategy. When I searched that phrase, there they were.

That is why everything I run is called app strategy and not product strategy. It is not a branding decision, it is where my people are.

The redesign: from information to a path

It took the better part of a year to turn what I know from big-tech roles into something that was actually useful to a person with an idea and no tech background.

At first I was delivering information: here are the processes, here is how roadmapping works. The value was broad and academic, closer to a university course than to help.

What I eventually understood was that people did not need more information. They needed to know what to do next, in what order, and whether the thing they just did was right. So I rebuilt it as a path with steps, and the pitch got shorter at the same time.

I know it landed because of something someone wrote in the free-text box on the application form: they said they loved that I said you need a path, not info, because that was what they needed. That was my own sentence, from the landing page, coming back to me.

What I changed about who it is for

I narrowed from the broad mix of early LinkedIn applicants to purpose-driven people who are not in tech, often from creative or service work, who have an idea and do not yet believe they can do it. That decision shapes the topics, the tone, and where I spend time.

I will be honest about the trade-off, because I tell founders not to do what I did: my target market is still broader than I would advise anyone else to run with, because what I teach is less about who the person is than about what stage they are at. I know I am going against my own advice, and I know what it costs me in marketing.

What happened next

I ran the beta, then the first full cohort in June and July 2026. The framework did what it was supposed to do: students finished with a strategy for their own product, and the material held up in front of a live class.

What I had not solved was reach. Getting in front of enough of the right people is much harder than building the thing, and that is the problem I am working on now, along with a new platform to run it all on.

What you can take from this

• Put something in front of people before it is ready, and let the applications or signups be your research.
• Watch who arrives, not just how many. The wrong people arriving is a message about your words.
• Use the words your people use, even when your industry uses different ones.
• Information is not a product. A path is.
• Being close to your own product makes you worse at judging it, including when the product is a course about not being close to your own product.

Keep reading

App Idea vs. App Strategy: What's the Difference and Why It Matters

How to Define Your Target Market When You Have an App Idea

Build It and They Will Come Is a Lie: What Actually Works in 2026

Learn this with me

From Passion to Product is the course this case study is about. It is free, six weeks, and taught live, and I ran this research on it before I ran it on anything else.

I teach it because the research I did here is the research I wish every founder had done before they spent money.

Join the waitlist for the next free cohort, or get the App Strategy Workbook and start now.