Exploration Meeting

01The room

Who takes part, and what to bring

From their side: the founders or whoever decides, plus anyone they want in the room. From ours: whoever will run the engagement. Keep it small enough that people answer instead of presenting.

Record the meeting and get it transcribed. The transcript is what the proposal gets built from. Ask permission to record at the start.

Setup

• One hour. Video call or in person, whichever happens sooner.
• Before the call, ask them to have documentation ready to share: deck, brand files, site analytics, anything they have.
• The goal is coverage, not depth: touch every area, note where it hurts, and go deep later in the workshop. Let them talk; the questions are prompts, not a form to fill.

02Phase 1 · ±10 min

The company

Start wide. The answers here decide which of the later blocks deserve the most time, and they produce the sentences the proposal quotes back.

Questions

• What does the company do, in your own words, as you'd say it to a customer?
• How do you make money, and who pays?
• What stage are you at: funding, team size, runway?
• What's working right now? What's clearly not?
• What does success look like twelve months from now?
• Why are you talking to us, and why now?
• Who decides on this engagement, and who else needs to be convinced?

03Phase 2 · ±10 min

Brand

Find out what exists, whether it still fits, and how far the appetite for change goes.

Questions

• How do you describe yourselves today, and does that still feel true?
• Does the current identity feel like you? Where does it pinch?
• What exists: logo files, guidelines, fonts, a design system? Who made them, when?
• What do customers say you are? Does that match what you want to be?
• Which brands do you admire, inside or outside your market?
• Are you attached to the name? The logo? Anything untouchable?
• Where does the brand have to live: site, product, deck, print, merch?

04Phase 3 · ±10 min

Product

Understand what users hire the product for and where it struggles. Even when the engagement is 'just' a website, the product decides what the story can honestly claim.

Questions

• What do users actually hire the product for?
• Walk me through a first use, from landing to first value. Where do people drop off?
• What's on the roadmap for the next two quarters, and why those things?
• Who builds it: team, stack, what's easy and what's expensive to change?
• What would you cut if you had to cut something?
• What do users ask for that you don't want to build?

05Phase 4 · ±10 min

Marketing

Map how customers arrive today and what the company claims, and whether those claims survive contact with proof.

Questions

• Where do customers come from today, channel by channel, roughly what share?
• What's the best-performing thing you've ever done? The most expensive failure?
• Who is the buyer, and is that the same person as the user?
• What claims do you make? Which can you prove with a name or a number?
• Who do you lose deals to, and what reason do you hear?
• What does marketing cost today: people, tools, spend?

06Phase 5 · ±10 min

Ops

How work actually moves through the company: where the hours go, what's manual, and what breaks under growth.

Questions

• Walk me through how work moves from sold to delivered to invoiced.
• What's manual that shouldn't be? What gets copied between tools by hand?
• What depends on one person? What happens when they're out?
• Which tools do you run on, and which do you pay for but barely use?
• What breaks first if you double in size?
• Where does AI already help you, and where do you suspect it could?

07Phase 6 · ±10 min

The ask & documentation

Close with logistics: what they can share, what happens next, and the boundaries that shape the proposal.

Ask for everything. More documentation means better deep research behind the proposal.

To collect

• The deck, and any past brand or strategy documents
• Brand assets: logos, fonts, guidelines, design files
• Site and product analytics access, or exports
• Customer quotes, testimonials, won/lost deal notes
• Any past research, audits, or agency work
• Budget range and timeline expectations, stated out loud
• A date: when they'll have the proposal, and who reviews it

08What comes out

The document

A transcript covering every area we could help with, the documentation set, and a stated budget and timeline.

The transcript becomes the proposal (including the deep research on positioning, gaps, competitors, and visual quality), generally within days of the call.