The notes nobody takes
A dashboard for a fictional venture. Where is it stuck? Read the numbers and the notes, pick the stage it's really stuck at, then see our read and why.
Fictional Every name and number here is made up for the puzzle.
The venture
An AI assistant that writes up site meetings for small architecture practices: who said what, what was decided, and who does what next.
What the founders thinkThe product is ready. We need a better sales process.
Demos given, per month
13 from 6
Free trials started
6 from 3
Trials still in use after two weeks
1 from 1
Practices paying
0 from 0
Also on the desk
- The most common reaction in a demo: "That's clever."
- Asked how they record site meetings today, most practices said they mostly don't.
- No practice has asked what it costs.
Stuck at Ideate.
The problem is real enough to mention and not real enough to act on.
What the dashboard shows
- Demos more than doubled over four months, and not one practice pays. More selling has produced more polite interest, nothing else.
- Trials go quiet within two weeks. A tool for a painful problem gets used the week it arrives.
- Nobody works around the missing notes by hand. On the Pain Ladder, the problem stops at "mentioned": it never reaches "worked around", let alone "paid for".
Why not Market?
It looks like a Market problem because the founders are selling and nothing closes. But a sales process sells harder into a pain nobody feels. No amount of it moves a problem up the ladder.
What we'd do next
Go back to Ideate before selling anything else. Ask practices what they already do by hand after a site meeting, and look for the job they work around: chasing actions, settling disputes about what was agreed. If one of those climbs the ladder, the product may already be half-built for it.
The method: Pain Ladder and Idea Diagnosis. The stage, in the Journal: Ideate stage: is the problem real?.