Financial Services & Insurance
The Launch Assessment
A fixed-fee, fixed-scope engagement that pressure-tests a new product, platform, or channel while the shape of it can still change. Two to three weeks, ending in a clear recommendation and the evidence behind it.
How It Works
Frame the question
Define exactly what's being decided: the opportunity, the constraints, what a yes would commit the organization to, and what evidence would justify a no. Most internal debates go in circles because this step never happens.
Test the opportunity
Market sizing and segmentation, unit economics, competitive dynamics, and demand smoke tests — real signals from real buyers where possible, not just desk research.
Stress the assumptions
Every opportunity has two or three assumptions doing all the load-bearing work. Find them, test them, and determine what happens to the economics when they bend, surfacing the key challenges and risks identified along the way.
Reshape and recommend
Most opportunities don't pass or fail whole. They need a different segment, a different price, a different channel, or a different order of operations. It ends in a live working session: what I'd change and why, what I'd keep watching, and what the path to approval and launch looks like. Sometimes the recommendation is don't. More often it's do this, differently.
What It Covers
Market and Demand
- Market sizing and segmentation: how big the opportunity actually is and where within it to start
- Demand validation: smoke tests and buyer signals gathered before the build, not after
- Competitive landscape: who's already there, how they win, and where the openings are
Economics
- Unit economics: CAC, LTV, payback period, and margin by channel
- The financial shape of the business: what it costs to build, what it returns, and when
- Sensitivity: which assumptions matter most, and what happens when they're wrong
Feasibility
- Regulatory and compliance exposure: the requirements that shape what can be built and how fast
- Distribution fit: whether the channels available can actually reach the buyer economically
- Organizational readiness: what the launch would demand of the company, and whether it's there
What You Get
A recommendation you can act on. Not a report that restates the question. What to build, for whom, at what price, through which channel — and the evidence behind each call. Where the plan needs to change, you get the change and the reasoning while changing it is still cheap. And if the opportunity doesn't hold up, you'll hear that plainly too, in weeks rather than quarters.
The risks and the kill criteria. The two or three assumptions doing the load-bearing work, what happens to the economics when they bend, and the pre-agreed conditions under which the answer becomes no — written down while heads are still cool and useful long after the engagement ends.
A running start. If it's a go, the Assessment flows directly into the Launch Blueprint: the analysis becomes the foundation of the business case, and no work is repeated.
Weighing a launch?
If you're deciding whether a new product, platform, or channel is worth real money — or how to shape it so it is — let's talk. In 30 minutes I'll tell you what I'd want to test, how long it would take, and whether an Assessment makes sense.
Schedule a Call