Latchet Founders Paused Coding for Foundation Sprint

Situation

Two former Substack engineers (Chris and James) wanted to build a product for artisans who struggle with online sales
They initially had multiple potential approaches but lacked clarity on which direction to pursue
As engineers, their natural instinct was to start coding immediately
They joined Character Labs, an accelerator program that begins with a structured "foundation sprint"
The founders were hesitant about delaying coding but agreed to the process

Actions

Foundation Sprint (2-day process)

Day 1: Basics & Differentiation

Identified their target customer: "artisans who want to sell online but find tech and marketing hard"
Defined the core problem: "sales growth" for these artisans
Mapped competitors: Shopify (primary), Etsy, and in-person sales at art fairs
Leveraged their unique advantage: experience building Substack's network growth features
Explored multiple differentiation axes through structured exercises
Selected two key differentiators: "helps you grow" and "cooperative" (versus competitors)
Created a visual positioning map placing their solution in the top-right quadrant

Day 2: Approach Selection

Evaluated four potential implementation paths:
- Building a standalone app
- Creating a newsletter platform (similar to Substack)
- Developing a Shopify plugin
- Building a full-stack solution
Used "magic lenses" to evaluate each approach through different perspectives
Selected a social sales app as their primary approach with full-stack as backup
Formulated a clear founding hypothesis: "If we help artisans solve online sales growth with a social sales app, we believe they'll choose it over Shopify and Etsy because our solution is cooperative and helps you grow"

Testing Through Design Sprints (3 consecutive weeks)

Week 1: Created landing page prototypes with different positioning
- Tested with real artisans
- Scorecard showed mostly negative results (lots of "red")
- Learned their approach wasn't resonating
Week 2: Revised hypothesis and created more detailed prototypes
- Incorporated learnings from first sprint
- Scorecard showed improvement (some "yellow" indicators)
- Differentiation was starting to resonate
Week 3: Further refined hypothesis and built more robust prototypes
- Scorecard showed breakthrough success (all "green")
- Found product-market fit indicators after just three weeks

Results

Transformed from uncertainty to clarity on target customer, problem, and approach
Identified winning differentiation that resonated with real customers
Avoided months of potentially wasted engineering effort
Achieved indicators of product-market fit in just three weeks
Gained confidence in their direction before significant code investment
Renamed from "Lyric" to "Latchet" for better SEO positioning

Key Lessons

Slow down to speed up: Taking 10 hours for a foundation sprint saved months of potential misdirection
Differentiation is crucial: Success came from finding unique positioning ("cooperative" + "helps you grow") that competitors couldn't match
Alignment precedes building: Getting clarity on the founding hypothesis unified decision-making
Test before investing: Showing prototypes to customers revealed insights that conversations alone couldn't
Structured process beats intuition: The sequential, structured approach forced important decisions that might otherwise be skipped
Embrace iteration: The founding hypothesis evolved significantly across three sprints
Engineers benefit from frameworks: Even technical founders with building instincts gained tremendous value from a structured thinking process
AI prototyping works best with clear direction: Starting with hand sketches and clear requirements leads to better AI-assisted prototypes

The foundation sprint process demonstrated that what feels slow in the hour-to-hour (not coding immediately) can dramatically accelerate progress in the week-to-week timeframe, helping founders validate their ideas before significant investment.