When you have built the product, but not yet decided which problem you are selling

Anatomy of the strategic validation of a B2B tech startup in the field of communication confidentiality.

Preliminary note

The case described here is real. The startup is not named, the product is not identified, and technical information that could make it recognizable is not disclosed.

What follows is the analytical path: how the competitive landscape was defined, which hypotheses were tested with the market, what emerged from the qualitative interviews, and why target, product and pricing took on a different meaning after the research.

The project did not arise from a communication problem.

It arose from a prior question: is there really a market willing to pay for this solution, and if so, what is it actually buying?

The startup profile

• A B2B tech startup in the field of communication confidentiality.
• A solution designed to enable highly confidential conversations.
• A product potentially aimed at companies, professionals and anyone handling particularly sensitive information.
• A market where free consumer tools, enterprise platforms, specialist solutions and maximum-security systems all coexist.
• The need to define positioning, priority target, offer configuration and pricing before a structured market entry.

The technology existed.

The question was which problem the market would value highly enough to pay to have it solved.

1. The initial request, and why it was set aside

The request could seem fairly straightforward: define how to position and price a confidential communication solution.

But it contained at least four different questions.

Who is the real competitor?

Who actually needs the product?

Which feature creates value?

How much is the market willing to pay?

Going straight to pricing would have meant putting a price on a product before establishing what the customer was buying.

So the question was taken one step further back.

Not:

“How much can we charge for a confidential communication solution?”

but:

“In what situation does a person decide that the tools they use every day are no longer enough?”

That threshold is where the analysis began.

2. The evidence that changed the question

2.1 The first competitor was not another app

The international benchmark revealed a market far more complex than the generic category of “secure messaging” suggested.

Distinct competitive families emerged: individual privacy, compliant business messaging, enterprise collaboration, solutions for top management, secure devices and government-grade solutions.

Each with profoundly different buying logics, levels of complexity and prices.

But the interviews surfaced an even more important finding.

When a communication is considered truly sensitive, many people do not necessarily look for a better app.

They stop writing.

They pick up the phone.

They meet in person.

They postpone the conversation.

They deliberately choose not to leave a digital trail.

The real substitute behavior for the product, then, was not just another platform.

It was operational silence.

Method rule

A product’s competitor is not necessarily whoever offers the same technology. It is any behavior the customer uses today to solve the same problem.

2.2 The perceived risk was relational before it was technical

When it came to confidential communications, the most immediate assumption was that the value lay mainly in cybersecurity.

Attacks. Interceptions. Compromised systems.

The interviews revealed a different hierarchy.

The most concrete concerns frequently involved:

• internal leaks;
• forwarded messages;
• screenshots;
• information reaching the wrong person;
• reputational exposure;
• strategies revealed prematurely;
• compromised negotiations;
• information shared outside the group that was meant to know it.

The sophisticated hacker existed in the imagination.

But that was not necessarily what made the need felt.

For a business owner with a patent, a professional handling a delicate situation, a board engaged in an extraordinary transaction, or a public figure, the risk took a much closer form: someone who should not know finds out.

The competitive category was therefore beginning to change.

Not simply cybersecurity.

Protection of the relationship of trust and of the decision-making core.

Method rule

The most serious problem technically is not necessarily the most relevant one commercially. The market buys the risk it can imagine happening to itself.

2.3 The target was not a sector. It was a condition

Very different profiles were interviewed.

Managers. Business owners. Professionals. Finance executives. Consultants. People with organizational responsibilities or high exposure.

Yet the variable that best explained interest was not the sector they belonged to.

People with similar professional profiles assigned very different value to the product.

The deciding factor was another: in my experience, how real is the potential cost of an information leak?

Willingness increased in contexts involving patents, intellectual property, corporate transactions, M&A, advisory work, legal matters, confidential strategies, high reputational exposure or previous experience of information loss.

Where this risk was not perceived, the solution was quickly compared with free tools already available.

Where the risk was real, the economic yardstick used to evaluate it changed as well.

The target therefore could not be defined simply as “SMEs,” “professionals” or “managers.”

What was needed was behavioral segmentation: people who have something to lose if a particular conversation leaves its intended perimeter.

Method rule

In emerging markets, the best segmentation criterion may not be who the customer is, but which problem they have already learned to fear.

2.4 The product was not meant for the whole organization

Another implicit assumption concerned scale.

A business solution easily leads to thinking in terms of users: dozens, hundreds, the entire organization.

The interviews pointed in the opposite direction.

Truly sensitive communications almost always involved very small groups:

• partners;
• board members;
• CFOs;
• advisors;
• legal counsel;
• key strategic figures;
• people temporarily involved in a negotiation or critical decision.

The problem, then, did not concern the company’s whole workforce.

It concerned the decision-making core.

This finding also had a direct impact on the product’s commercial configuration.

A package for small groups emerged as the most natural balance point: broad enough to represent a real decision-making circle, yet narrow enough to preserve the logic of protecting a select group.

Packaging thus stopped being an arbitrary commercial choice.

It became a reflection of the actual shape of the problem.

Method rule

The right number of licenses is not decided in a price list. It is discovered by observing how many people actually take part in the problem the product is meant to solve.

2.5 Price did not only measure willingness to pay. It measured credibility

The pricing research used a Van Westendorp approach to explore four thresholds:

• too cheap to be credible;
• a bargain;
• expensive but still acceptable;
• too expensive.

A particularly interesting behavior emerged.

For a product that promises to protect highly sensitive communications, a price that was too low could reduce trust rather than increase appeal.

If the promise concerns a conversation that could compromise a patent, a negotiation or a reputation, the customer is not necessarily looking for the cheapest option.

They are looking for a solution they can trust.

Price thus became, at the same time:

• a barrier;
• a signal of quality;
• a signal of reliability;
• an indicator of the market tier in which the product was asking to be placed.

But the research also showed something else: willingness to pay grew along with the solution’s credibility.

Certifications. Independent audits. References. Demonstrations of technical robustness. Direct experience of the risk.

It was therefore impossible to separate pricing strategy from building trust.

Method rule

In high-trust markets, price does not only communicate what the product costs. It communicates how credible the maker believes its own promise to be.

2.6 The best security loses value if no one uses it

Almost across the board, one final barrier emerged.

Simplicity.

The technical value could be high, but the product had to fit into the lives of people who had no wish to become cybersecurity experts.

Executives. Business owners. Lawyers. Advisors. Professionals.

People used to tools that simply work.

Moreover, a protected communication exists only when the other person enters the same environment too.

Every additional step, every onboarding complication and every difficulty in bringing in external contacts therefore reduced the security’s actual usable value.

This turned user experience from an operational requirement into a strategic variable.

A solution that is theoretically more secure but too complex to use can, in practice, offer less protection than an inferior solution that is actually adopted.

Method rule

In security products, adoption does not come after the technology. It is part of the technology: protection that users avoid using protects nothing.

3. The turning point

Bringing together the benchmark, interviews, usage behavior and pricing, the product began to change category.

It was no longer simply a more secure chat.

Because defining it that way meant forcing it into comparison with well-known, widespread and often free tools.

The strategic question became a different one: what does this solution actually protect?

Not all business communication.

Not all employees.

Not every conversation.

It protects a specific moment: the one in which a few people need to share information that should not leave that circle.

The strategic progression therefore became:

from a secure messaging tool → to a protected environment for the inner decision-making core → to discreet protection of the relationship of trust.

This changes product, target, pricing and communication all at once.

Because what is being sold is no longer a technical feature.

It is the possibility of holding digitally the conversations that, without it, many people would rather not entrust to a chat.

4. Seven questions to ask before launching a tech startup

1. Does the market describe the problem in the same words we use?
2. Are we comparing the product with those using similar technology, or with every alternative the customer uses today to achieve the same result?
3. Is our target defined by demographic and company characteristics, or by the actual intensity of the problem?
4. When a prospect says “I don’t need it,” does it mean the problem does not exist, or that they do not perceive it?
5. Does the configuration of the offer reflect how the product will actually be used, or does it stem mainly from our internal logic?
6. Would a lower price really increase sales, or could it reduce the credibility of the promise?
7. If we removed every technical feature from the presentation, could we still explain what concrete risk we are reducing?

5. Where to start

Before building campaigns, sales funnels or a final pricing structure, a startup should compare at least five levels:

• what the technology can do;
• the problem the founders think they are solving;
• the problem the market actually perceives;
• the alternatives the customer already uses;
• the economic value the customer assigns to the solution.

In this project, the comparison was built using two complementary tools: competitive benchmarking and qualitative market validation.

The first made it possible to understand where the competitive landscape was already crowded.

The second showed where real value for the customer lay.

It was at the intersection of the two that the strategic direction emerged.

Because product-market fit is not verified by asking:

“Do you like the product?”

It is verified by trying to understand:

“What problem would have to become important enough for you to change your current behavior and pay to solve it?”

6. This case is not about cybersecurity

The mechanism applies to a great many tech startups.

Especially those in which the technology comes before the market has been fully defined.

The product works.

The features are distinctive.

The team knows the solution extremely well.

And precisely for that reason, it risks describing the value from the point of view of those who built it.

But the market does not buy features.

It buys an outcome.

Reducing a risk. Saving time. Protecting an asset. Avoiding a mistake. Making possible something that used to be difficult.

The symptom is often:

“We need to explain the product better.”

The strategic question comes first:

“Are we explaining our technology better, or have we understood what the customer thinks they are buying?”

For a startup, the difference can shape more than communication.

It can determine the target, the packaging, the pricing and the category in which the product will enter the market.

To discuss your case

If you have built solid technology but have not yet clarified which problem the market is willing to pay to solve, the first step is a conversation about target, offer and price, before any campaign.

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