a research toolkit for the discovery phase.md

Go Deep to Build Fast: A Research Thinking Toolkit to Speed Up the Discovery Phase

There’s a mirage deceiving founders in the AI era: Mistaking speed for traction.

The allure of vibe-coding an MVP in a few minutes offers a tempting shortcut past the hard work of figuring out why you’re building something and how to build it best. The problem, the solution, the team — these are the core company-building jobs you can’t outsource. But many founders figure they can adjust them on the fly in favor of racing to market. Just as it’s easier than ever to ship a product in record time, it’s easier than ever to build a product no one wants and a company no one wants to join.

Jeanette Mellinger argues today’s founders are zooming past a step in their scramble for product-market fit: finding problem-solution fit, which includes the often-invisible yet critical component of founder fit. “Problem-solution fit means finding a deeper customer need that you’re uniquely positioned to solve, and building for it with better early signals and stronger team alignment from the start,” she says.

Why you need stronger problem-solution fit before you hit the market

Imagine a Bobo doll — the life-sized roly-poly toy with a round, heavy bottom. You can knock Bobo from any angle, and it will waver, but it won’t fall down. It stays balanced thanks to its weighted base.

“The components that make up problem-solution fit are your base as a team and company,” she says. “You take a week or a month to figure out your vision, your values and how you work. And when you’re lost, you come back to the foundation that you as a team or as a founder put together, so you can apply these principles to the latest thing you’re building.”

Mellinger is a fan of IDEO’s way of describing a good business: it’s desirable, it serves a human well, it’s economically viable and it’s something that you can technically deliver.

Finding this intersection isn’t a linear process. “Problem, solution and fit are all different steps, but you can't think about them in isolation from one another. You need to think about each one at every stage," says Mellinger. “And the silent first step is the founder. Before thinking about the problem, you've got to start with the founder.”

The three phases of deep research

Going through each of the steps to find problem-solution fit requires different levels of research. Mellinger says this will involve constant altitude shifting and changes of pace, inward reflection and in-depth conversations, blending methods from UX research, design and behavioral psych — techniques that aren’t often deployed in a startup setting, but that she’s found to be incredibly productive for founders.

Here’s a breakdown of her three phases of research.

Incubate: Fight the urge to build hurriedly to allow richer ideas to surface

There’s a reason the best ideas often arrive when you’re going for a walk, washing the dishes or taking a shower. “Incubation leans on what we know about where good ideas come from, along with UX research methods of observation and lighter secondary research. Look at how our brains work: Great ideas don’t happen on schedule. True insight takes time, and pops up in unexpected ways,” says Mellinger.

Immerse: Uncover more differentiated ideas and insights faster with focused sprints

This is where you’ll spend time exploring and codifying the most intriguing ideas from the incubation phase. “Immersion is about going deeper, not necessarily slower,” says Mellinger.

Integrate: Build for behavior change (and be realistic about the power of inertia)

Integration means acting on the ideas you explored during immersion and incubation to plan how you'll build a solution that isn’t just differentiated, but easy to incorporate into a user’s life. Sounds simple enough from a product perspective. But getting humans to change their behavior is anything but.

Apply these methods to find problem-solution fit

So which methods can get you there? And how much time should you spend on this research?

Mellinger breaks down each component of finding a fit for the founding team, problem and solution.

Founder

The goal: Assemble a team that’s aligned, connected and resilient, and knows how and what it builds best.

To kickstart incubation, and to get a sense of how well you know yourself as a leader or team, start by asking yourself one or more baseline questions.

Baseline questions to answer:

Problem

The goal: Build your customer foundation to unearth the deeper problem you want to solve and the customer behavior you have to design for.

Get clear about how you’ll structure your time with potential customers and synthesize what you’ve learned.

Baseline questions to answer:

Solution

The goal: To build a product your customers are happy to change their behavior to use.

Baseline questions to answer:

The goal of this research framework is to help you think better as a founder, no matter where you are in your journey. “You’re learning how to generate deeper ideas, how to work on something lightly in the background, and recognize when it's time to set everything aside and go really deep on something. That will be valuable at every stage of a company,” she says.