From: Ravi Deshmukh, Product To: product-team@, leadership@ Subject: Discovery synthesis — Approvals (12 interviews)

Team,

Wrapping up three weeks of discovery on the approvals concept. Twelve interviews with ops leads at target-size companies. Full notes in the shared drive; summary below.

Headline: strong validation. Recommend we build.

Who we spoke to

Twelve ops leads, companies between 80 and 400 people. Nine from the inbound waitlist, three intros from Bea's network. Two logistics, four professional services, three SaaS, three manufacturing. Sessions were 45–60 minutes, remote.

Themes

Theme 1 — Approvals are painful (11/12). Nearly everyone described their current approval process in negative terms. Words that came up repeatedly: "bottleneck," "chaotic," "frustrating," "black hole."

Theme 2 — Strong interest in automation (10/12). Ten of twelve reacted positively to the concept when we walked them through the mockups. Several asked when it would be available.

Theme 3 — Mobile matters (7/12). Seven said they'd want to approve from their phone. This was unprompted in three cases.

Theme 4 — Integration is table stakes (9/12). Nine mentioned that it would need to work with their existing stack, though the specific tools varied a lot.

Representative quotes

"Honestly, if you had this today I'd use it." — ops lead, professional services

"This is exactly the kind of thing we've been looking for." — ops lead, SaaS

"The approval chain is a nightmare. Anything that fixes it, I'm interested." — ops lead, logistics

"I could see this saving us a lot of time." — ops lead, manufacturing

Concept rating

We showed the three mockups and asked each participant to rate the concept 1–5. Average 4.2. Nine of twelve gave a 4 or 5. The two 3s were both manufacturing; one 2, also manufacturing (see risks).

Risks

• Manufacturing may be a weaker segment for v1 — three of our four lowest ratings.
• Integration scope is unclear and could expand.
• Two participants asked about pricing; we deflected.

Recommendation

The problem is clearly real and the appetite is clearly there. Recommend we move to build, targeting professional services and SaaS for v1 and treating manufacturing as a fast-follow. Suggested scope is the approval chain plus mobile approve/reject, integrations deferred to v2.

Happy to walk anyone through the notes.

Ravi

Appendix — interview guide

1. Tell us a bit about your role and your team.
2. How would you describe your current approval process?
3. What are the biggest frustrations with it?
4. (show mockups) What's your reaction to this?
5. Would you use something like this?
6. How much time do you think it would save you?
7. What would we need to have for you to consider switching?
8. On a scale of 1–5, how valuable would this be to your team?