Programs

Sales · Facilitator-led

Customer Discovery for Product Teams

Customer evidence before the build

Two simulations, one research report and two guided documents. Each room is built around the participant: their own product for the research and documents, their role and seniority for the simulations. Unlimited attempts.

5 rooms · about 2 hours 25 min

Start program

Who it's for: Product managers, founders and product marketers who want to know what customers need before building or positioning, set up by a head of product or a founder.
Format: Facilitator-led
Program sessions: 5

Who it's for

Product managers, founders and product marketers who want to know what customers need before building or positioning, set up by a head of product or a founder.

Output

A scored report after each simulation, with the moment that earned each score, one recommended focus and a trajectory across every attempt
A sourced report on the market's customers with a confidence rating on every section, and an evidence log of real interviews written up as evidence and opinion
A problem statement with a recommended path and next steps, and a positioning statement with a verdict, both built from what the product manager states and ready for an engineering lead
Scored against published frameworks: Behaviour-Grounded Discovery, Underlying-Job Framing, the Minto Pyramid Principle and Aristotelian rhetoric; the documents are built on 5 Whys, the Weighted Decision Matrix, Five-Step Positioning and Category Choice; the report rests on named, cited sources

Program contents

Interview discipline · Customer Discovery
Market evidence · Customer Intelligence
Problem definition · Problem Analysis
Positioning the offer · Product Positioning
Making the build case · Presentation Under Pressure

How the program works

A five-week program for product managers validating a roadmap item before it is built, assigned by a head of product or product lead, built on Renatus. Two simulation rooms, one research room and two guided documents · Five weeks, one room a week, real customer conversations between them · Unlimited attempts · Ongoing thereafter.

The rooms

Customer Discovery

Simulation

Calibration: role title, stage (early idea, pre-MVP, early product, or established product entering a new segment), industry or sector and a brief description of working context, with the organisation's website as an option.

Customer Intelligence

Research

Set-up: the industry or market, the specific sub-sector or niche, the geographic region, and the product manager's role or relationship to this market.

Problem Analysis

Framework

Ren guides the product manager through the problem in order: the challenge, what it is costing, why it is happening, the options, the recommended path and the next steps.

Product Positioning

Framework

Ren guides the product manager through the positioning in order: what buyers consider instead, what this has that others do not, why those attributes matter, who values them most, and the category to claim.

Presentation Under Pressure

Simulation

Calibration: role title, audience (a single senior stakeholder, the board, the executive committee or a hostile external audience), industry or sector and a brief description of working context, with the organisation's website as an option.

Why this program exists

A product manager with a roadmap item in mind asks a customer whether they would use it, and the customer, being polite, says yes. The feature is built on that yes, ships to silence, and a quarter of engineering is gone. This program prepares product managers to find out what is true before the build starts. Ren plays the customer in a discovery interview built for the product's stage, researches who the market's real customers are from named sources, guides the product manager through a problem statement and a positioning built from their own evidence, and then plays the senior audience that tests the build case.

What you'll achieve

A scored report after each simulation with the moment that earned each score, and unlimited attempts, each a new customer or a new audience, charted against every attempt before it
A sourced report on the market's customers with a confidence rating on every section, and an evidence log of real interviews written up as evidence and opinion
A problem statement with a recommended path and next steps, and a positioning statement with a verdict on whether it holds, both ready for an engineering lead

At a glance

Who it's for: Product managers with a roadmap item they want to validate, founders at idea or pre-product stage, and product marketers who own positioning. It is assigned by a head of product, a product lead or a founder running the team. Customer Discovery calibrates to the product's stage, so one cohort can hold a first-year product manager and a founder. It assumes participants can get three customers or prospects on a call across two weeks, and nothing else.
Cadence: 5 weeks
1: Interview discipline · Customer Discovery · Read Question Openness and Hypothesis Discipline; read the three rewritten questions
2: Market evidence · Customer Intelligence · Read the gap and what drives the decision, with their confidence ratings; read the three hypotheses and the first write-up
3: Problem definition · Problem Analysis · Read Why It's Happening and Recommended Path against the original two sentences; read the evidence log
4: Positioning the offer · Product Positioning · Read Best-Fit Segment and the verdict; read the one-page case; read the Ren summary across four rooms
5: Making the build case · Presentation Under Pressure · Read Evidence Handling and Question Response; make the build decision; read the team report; set the ongoing plan

Session by session

Week 1: Interview discipline

Find out how much the product manager leads a customer today, and rewrite the questions that do it before the first real conversation.

Customer Discovery

Week 2: Market evidence

Get a sourced picture of the market's customers before interviewing three of them, and turn it into hypotheses a real conversation can test.

Customer Intelligence

Week 3: Problem definition

Name the real problem, what it is costing and why it is happening, from the evidence log and the report, and choose a path.

Problem Analysis

Week 4: Positioning the offer

Land a positioning that names the alternatives, the segment and the category to claim, and get a verdict on whether it holds.

Product Positioning

Week 5: Making the build case

Put the build case to a senior audience that challenges it, hold the argument on evidence, and take the question the product manager did not prepare for

Presentation Under Pressure

Five rooms from the first customer interview to the build decision, run weekly, measured over time.

Start program

Whether a market is real, where it is growing, and where the opportunity sits

How an entire industry is structured, who controls it, and where it is heading

Who controls a market, how they compete, and where the real gaps are

Who buys in a market, what drives their decisions, and where the unmet needs are

What competitors charge in a market, how pricing is structured, and what customers will pay

Who supplies the critical inputs to a market, how concentrated it is, and what switching costs

The technology deployed in a sector, and where competitive advantage moves next

How product reaches the buyer in a market, and where channel power is shifting

Financials, leadership, strategy, and reputation on a company

Deep dive into how a company operates strategically, and where it is most exposed

Revenue, margins, cash, debt, and auditor signals on a company

How a company is perceived across customers, employees, media, and ESG

Discover a country's GDP, political environment, infrastructure, and outlook

Discover a city's GDP, economic drivers, workforce, and trajectory

Trade flows, tariffs, agreements, and friction points between two countries

Background, current state, key actors, evidence, and where an issue is heading

What a policy does, who wins and loses, and how it lands in practice

The specific risks facing a market — ranked, evidenced, and with the signals to watch

Single-source exposures, concentration, and trade-route risk for a market

Climate, governance, social, and controversy risk in a sector

Pending legislation, enforcement shifts, and where the rules are likely to change

Licensing, compliance, recent changes, and pending legislation in a jurisdiction

Government stability, policy direction, and the political risks facing a market

What a role pays — verified across named salary databases and job posting data

Whether to take a job at a company, with the evidence behind the answer

Who the credible candidates are, what they earn, and how the search will unfold

How a career in an industry works — entry, paths, pay, and prospects

The three things that will move a business forward this quarter

A 90-day plan that turns a strategy into something a team can act on Monday

Segment, positioning, channels, and pricing — tested against each other so the four hold together

A positioning the market can place — and a category claim worth defending

A pricing strategy that the market accepts and the business can defend in negotiation

Dashboard, thresholds and owners

Dashboard, thresholds and owners

Targets, thresholds and cadence

Whether an opportunity is worth pursuing — with conditions or risks named

The real problem behind the surface one, with options and a recommended next step

How a business creates, delivers, and captures value — and where it is exposed

Where work is breaking, where capability is missing, and the one structural change worth making

Build, buy, partner, or wait — with the killer assumption named

Whether a specific partnership is worth pursuing — with the asymmetries named

The right financing structure for the opportunity — tested against fit, cost, and flexibility

A fundraise structured to close on terms worth living with

Every variance classified — structural, timing, one-off or noise — with the call the pattern demands

How long the cash lasts across three scenarios, with the killer assumption named

Whether the per-unit economics hold up — with the killer assumption named

Whether the pay set serves the talent strategy, with the cost of fixing it

A board report that lands the narrative, the KPIs, the exceptions, and the decisions requested

What metrics are missing, misleading, or quietly rewarding the wrong thing

A complete business plan ready to put in front of investors, partners, or a board

A career decision weighed against criteria that matter, with a pre-mortem and a verdict

What matters most, what you would give up, and what stays true under pressure

Which option holds up under income loss, rate moves, or a downturn

A relocation decision and plan, with the trade-offs each destination forces

What the culture is like — values in practice, leadership behaviour, and where the gap sits

Strategy clarity, alignment, talent density, ways of working, and trust in leadership

What's energising people, what's draining them, and the levers that would move engagement

The patterns in how a person handles pressure, conflict, collaboration, and decisions

PENDING — product being redesigned. See Replit brief.

How a person leads — defaults, strengths, blind spots, and development areas

Real strengths backed by evidence — and the cost each one carries when overplayed

The values revealed by what a person has held the line on, refused, or regretted

What every role owns, what's silently dropped, and which handoffs are breaking

Where the team is aligned on priorities and goals, and where dangerous gaps sit

Where trust, conflict handling, and accountability are strong — and where they break

Any subject explained to a real listener, scored on accuracy, depth, audience adaptation, and handling the unknown

A presentation rehearsal scored on lead argument, evidence, question response, and poise

A stakeholder-influence rehearsal scored on reading the room, framing, negotiation, and durability

A managing-up rehearsal scored on positioning, evidence, flexibility, and outcome

A meeting rehearsal scored on structure, air-time management, progress, and closure

The conversation that's been avoided, with an assessment of how the conversation went

A saying-no rehearsal scored on clarity, rationale, alternative, and relationship

A performance-conversation rehearsal scored on clarity, ownership, empathy, and path forward

A team-conflict rehearsal scored on directness, fairness, action, and aftercare

A hiring interview rehearsal scored on question design, follow-up, bias, and assessment integrity

A leadership crisis scored on decision quality, communication, strategy, and pressure response

A negotiation rehearsal scored on preparation, anchoring, concession pattern, and pressure response

A strategic-decision rehearsal scored on framing, information use, trade-off recognition, and time horizon

An ethics rehearsal where the right path is costly, scored on recognition and response

A prioritisation rehearsal scored on triage, trade-off recognition, communication, and revisability