Helping a European cosmetics startup launch its pilot product
A validated core product, accelerator acceptance, and a multi-market launch
The challenge
A European cosmetics startup was building toward a first launch with two visions of the product pulling in different directions. The business side saw a data-collection play monetised through advertising; the technical side saw a social platform built around high-intensity interaction at the moment of cosmetics purchase and use. The harder problem wasn't picking a winner. It was helping the two functions reach a real synthesis — a single product experience that drew on the best of both visions while enabling the behaviors users actually needed in the moments that mattered.
Our approach
Most of the work focused on shaping how women on-the-go and inside retail contexts would actually interact with the app. We started with the first-time user experience and the mechanics of how connections between users would form, then ran user profiling and segmentation, behavioral prototyping, and assumption and relevance testing with target users to put the founders' value hypotheses under pressure. The aim was to sharpen the product's problem-solving for early adopters and the early majority, and to identify the beachhead users where a differentiated offering could find oxygen in a category dominated by deep-pocketed global incumbents.
The result
The founding team landed on a core product design that fused the strongest elements of the technical and business visions and validated it with the people it was meant to serve. That work helped earn the team a place in a world-class acceleration program run by a global beauty multinational, and the startup went on to launch its first product in multiple European markets. The launch belonged to the founders; we were glad to have helped enable the conditions for it.
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