Discovery Sprint

A 2-3 week sequence to validate or kill a new earnings stream before any meaningful capital or time goes in.

For the operator right now, this is repurposed to validate the white-label consumer product venture before sourcing inventory.

Sprint structure (14 days)

Week 1: Diagnosis (days 1-7)

Goal: understand the problem and the customer, not the product.

• Day 1-2: Customer problem mapping
• Talk to a partner: what are the 3-5 most common hair complaints from her salon clients?
• Talk to 5+ of a partner's clients: what products do they currently buy and why? What product would they pay $30+ for that doesn't exist?
• Capture verbatim quotes. No paraphrasing.
• Day 3-4: Market scan
• Identify 3 problem areas competitors solve well (avoid these for v1)
• Identify 1-2 problem areas where products are weak, expensive, or absent (target these)
• Day 5-7: Concept narrowing
• Narrow to 2 product concepts (NOT more)
• Each concept gets: target problem, target customer, rough $/unit cost, estimated retail, channel
• Decide: does this need to be a salon-only product, a retail product, or both?

Week 2: Supplier and economics (days 8-14)

Goal: prove the unit economics work before going further.

• Day 8-10: White-label supplier shortlist
• Find 5+ white-label cosmetics manufacturers (US-based preferred for compliance speed)
• Get MOQ and per-unit cost for each
• Get sample lead times and minimum customization options (label, fragrance, formula tweaks)
• Day 11-12: Unit economics
• Build a simple model: cost per unit, packaging, fulfillment, salon vs DTC margin, breakeven units, time to recoup MOQ
• Compare against the hair-product-validator agent's model
• Day 13-14: Go/no-go
• Ship the validator's go/no-go report
• Force the decision: order samples (go), wait 30 days for more signal (delay), or kill

Week 3 (only if go): Pre-production (days 15-21)

• Order samples from top-2 suppliers
• Begin brand work (hand to hair-product-brand agent)
• Begin compliance prep (FDA cosmetics labeling, trademark search via hair-product-brand and external legal)

Go criteria (set before starting)

A "go" requires ALL of:

• ≥3 client interviews surfaced the same unmet need
• ≥1 supplier with MOQ ≤500 units at landed cost producing ≥50% margin at salon retail
• the partner is in (already confirmed) AND willing to dedicate checkout space and ~30 min/week to product conversations
• Estimated breakeven ≤4 months from launch

Kill criteria (set before starting)

Any one of:

• the partner backs out
• No supplier under 1000 MOQ at viable margin
• Client interviews show no consistent unmet need (everyone happy with current products)
• Required capital for v1 > $3000

Output cadence

• End of week 1: short report + recommendations
• End of week 2: full go/no-go with model
• After day 14: written decision in decisions.md

How to use this skill

When the operator invokes:

1. Check if a sprint is currently active. If yes, give status: which day, what's been done, what's next.
2. If no active sprint, ask which venture this is for. Default: hair product.
3. Walk the operator through TODAY's tasks for the sprint.
4. Update ~/Vault/Vantage-OS/hair-product-state.md (or appropriate venture state file) with progress.

Anti-patterns to block

• No product before validation. If the operator asks to brainstorm packaging on day 2, redirect to client interviews.
• No marketing planning before product is locked. If the operator asks about Instagram strategy on day 5, redirect.
• No website before supplier is locked. Day 15+ only.