Do you have an example of when market insights influenced business change i.e. product roadmap

Across my last few roles focused on API infrastructure products, one of the most impactful research findings has been around developer behavior and how much it has shifted. A lot of developer and engineer roles at organizations don't follow typical titles anymore. A software engineer can own purchasing decisions, influence the roadmap, run evaluations, and champion tools to their team. All without a title that signals any of that. And the buying committee within accounts looks a lot different th ...Read More

Market research disproved internal assumptions about mid-market packaging, ultimately preventing a premature SKU launch and redirecting the team toward a leaner sales play instead. The context: an enterprise product was being considered for a mid-market version. Internally, there were strong assumptions — based on existing customer feedback — that mid-market buyers would want depth in specific use case capability sets rather than breadth. A quick third-party survey of the mid-market revealed the ...Read More

Customer interviews uncovered an unexpected third bucket of high-value use cases, which led to a fundamental pivot in pricing model — moving to use-case-agnostic pricing and launching a freemium tier. The scenario: a product had been launched for its first use case, and the team was evaluating whether to expand to a second use case and potentially shift pricing. The research process: 1. Interviewed a series of customers using a pricing questionnaire 2. Spent significant time asking about current ...Read More

Market research helped define an entirely new product category — Customer Identity and Access Management — by combining outside-in feedback from target ICPs and analysts to find language that resonated and didn't conflict with existing categories. Early in Michael's career at a pre-Series A startup, the company had built new-to-the-world technology with no existing market category. Initial attempts at category creation failed because the terminology was too inside-out — it wasn't customer langua ...Read More