The good news was I had given the company unprecedented visibility into the product. They could now see what the developers had built and what the designers had designed. It was displayed in full clarity.
The bad news was that they hadn't designed or built all that much. Basic functionality necessary to launch any sort of remotely viable product was missing, and not even planned for.
Furthermore, what had been built did not sync with any sort of strategic goal. It was unclear if the product would serve any market need.
Early on, the primary consumer experience was desktop-oriented, which was out of touch with how most video commerce is consumed nowadays. In particular, the fact that the company wanted to target Gen Z, who spend much of their time on TikTok, yet put all their efforts into a desktop website demonstrated a gap between strategy and execution.
While the company positioned itself as a platform for independent creators, they spent a considerable amount of money and effort brokering deals with big-ticket celebrities to make content, despite the fact that they could never be a source of ongoing content and would produce little ROI.
This was certainly contributing to the company's dwindling resources and, again, served no strategic purpose.
This was an opportunity to pivot
These were among the findings that I presented to the company's leadership. We asserted that this was actually an opportunity for a restart. The company would need to scrap many of its core assumptions, commit to a market-driven solution, and reboot.
This gambit would require more funding from the investors, meaning there was a chance the entire effort could be in vain, but it would be a necessary effort. It was at this time that the new VP of Product arrived at the company. She was instrumental in selling this reboot to the founders.