Spend a week with us and dramatically improve your product's chances.
Start your Spark→We've Helped
A Note from Karl & Ken
Dear Founder,
Everyone says they love it.
Your friends. The people you told about it. The investor who took a second call.
Nodding is free.
What's rare is someone who pushes back on your assumptions.
Someone who asks the questions that find the real gaps.
Someone who cares as much as you do.
Because until someone actually pays, you're guessing.
Are you ahead of the market? Or building something nobody wants?
Most founders build the whole thing to find out.
By then the money is gone.
Maybe you've already tried.
Got 70% of the way with Claude before auth started misfiring.
Or you hired an agency. They cashed the check. Eight months later, nothing shipped.
Or your round closes in 60 days and you still don't have a demo.
Yeah. We've been there.
We've helped ship hundreds of products.
And made every mistake possible, so we know what not to do.
Here's the thing.
It's almost never the building that kills a great idea.
It's building without a strategy.
One that knows your user. What they need. How they think. Where they already are.
Then you run that thinking through your design, development, and marketing.
People wanting what you made isn't something you ship.
It's the market wanting it. You don't get there on code alone.
It's why most startups never make it:
So we built Spark.
One week with us. A real plan. A path you'd bet on.
Karl & Ken
How Spark Works
You start
What you are building, who it is for, and what is in the way.
Your brief
Questions written for your product, not a form. Every answer grounds the research and the room.
Before we meet
Three research agents run rounds of deep research on your brief. Market, real customers, and the case against you.
Live, together
Two live sessions. The agents answer every question alongside you, anonymously, and the room votes on the best one.
You leave with
The nine-section plan, and five core screens designed like the product is already live. Both yours to keep.
In the Room
They spend days researching your market before the session starts. Then they sit in the room and answer every question, alongside you.
Maps the market: who else solves this, and what they charge.
Listens to real customers: forums, reviews, and honest complaints.
The skeptic: looks for the evidence that could kill the idea.
Every answer goes up anonymously. The room votes on the best one without knowing who wrote it.
Owners who already pay for a booking app and still keep the paper diary open.
The ones who got burned when a system went down on a Saturday.
Independent salon owners.
Then the names appear. Sometimes the best answer is yours. Sometimes it came from an agent that read the reviews nobody has time to read.
The Deliverable
Nine sections, written for your product, in a document you own. Here is one of them.
Owners of two and three chair salons who already pay for a booking app, and still keep a paper diary open next to the till.
The diary is the tell. They do not distrust software, they distrust being locked out of their own Saturday when it goes wrong. Every screen has to survive that fear, starting with the one where they move a booking by hand.
They are not booking appointments. They are protecting Saturday.
| They say | They mean |
|---|---|
| "It is too expensive." | I already pay for one I do not trust. |
| "I will think about it." | I cannot be the one who breaks the diary. |
| "Does it send reminders?" | No-shows cost me more than the software does. |
An example section, written to show the format. Your plan is written about your product.
What's in the Spark
Ten things come out of the week. You own all of it.
Dream-buyer research
Exactly who you're for. Their real fear, what they actually want, how they think, and the words they use. Not a demographic. A person you could call.
$8,000
Competitive teardown
Who you're really up against, where you can win, and the unmet pain every competitor is ignoring.
$5,000
Positioning & the angle
The angle on your idea no one's taken yet, and the one line that makes your buyer feel read. We'd bet on it.
$10,000
How you will get customers
Your first 100 customers, named and matched to where to find them. Where they already are, who's ready to buy now, and what to say to reach them.
$12,000
Product design
Five core screen designs. Not wireframes. The actual product, designed like it's already live.
$6,000
Brand guidelines, if you need them
Colour palette, type, voice, and how to use your logo. Enough for any designer to stay on brand without asking you first.
$5,000
First-version scope & roadmap
The product we'd build, feature by feature, in priority order. The cuts already made, so you don't waste time and money on what doesn't matter.
$10,000
Fixed price & delivery date
What your build costs and when it ships, locked in writing before we start. No estimate, and the work will not grow past what we agreed.
Included
A plan you own
Detailed enough that any team can pick it up and build it, even if you never work with us again.
Yours to keep
Your own AI strategist
A private agent trained on your whole plan. Ask it anything, any time, long after the week is done.
Included
All of it. One fixed price.
Build with us and it comes off your build cost.
$56,000$10,000
Estimates benchmarked from 2025 to 2026 US agency & freelancer rate cards.
Founders We've Shipped For
“Ken and Karl made the process so easy and seamless. The turnaround time was unlike anything I have experienced before and the final product speaks for itself. They provided the best guidance for UX and user experience and were incredibly collaborative in terms of feedback. We are so happy with how everything turned out and gives our clients a great first impression of our work!”
Amanda Dubin
Co-owner, Victoria Dubin Events
Book Your Spot
Spark saves you from wasting money on the wrong product for the wrong user. If you build with us, the cost comes off the build price. The plan is yours either way.
Spots book fast. We only take one Spark per week.