Case Study · Recruitment

FOUND Started With 500 People in Zurich. It Ended With Product-Market Fit.

FOUND is a Swiss startup out to digitise IT hiring. Its two founders - both veteran recruitment executives - had a strong idea and no product. We took them to Product-Market Fit the disciplined way: pick a tiny beachhead, prove demand before building, and let evidence write the roadmap.

Sector

Recruitment · HR Tech

Market

Switzerland

Focus

0 → 1 · Product-Market Fit

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0 → 1,000

Active B2C users in the first year

B2B customers in the first year

< 6 months

To Problem–Solution Fit

The Client

Two recruitment veterans, one idea, and a blank page

FOUND was founded by two seasoned recruitment executives who wanted to digitise hiring in the IT sector. They knew the industry cold - but a hiring platform is a different animal from a hiring agency. They had a compelling idea and no product, and they reached out to us to help them figure out where to even begin.

We joined as FOUND's first product hire, taking product ownership from the founders: shaping the vision, strategy, and roadmap, leading discovery, and setting up how the company would build product going forward.

The Challenge

A crowded market is no place to guess

Recruitment platforms are a red ocean. Building the wrong thing here doesn't just waste months - it's existential. Three questions had to be answered before a line of production code made sense:

Who, exactly?

The market was crowded and the product scope was wide open. Which roles, and whose needs, should FOUND serve first?

Does anyone want it?

Demand had to be proven before investing in full-scale development - not assumed from a founder's conviction.

What's worth building?

With limited runway, the team needed evidence about which features actually moved the needle - not a wishlist.

The Approach

How we found Product-Market Fit - one validated step at a time

We ran a structured discovery framework in three moves: narrow the market until it's almost uncomfortably specific, learn the real problem, then validate the solution before building it.

Beachhead Market

Start impossibly narrow

Chose experienced product leaders (3–5 years' leadership experience) as the initial niche.
Sized it deliberately small: roughly 500 professionals in Zurich, Switzerland - specific enough to actually reach, dominate, and learn from.

Problem Discovery

Learn the real problem before proposing a solution

Ran 50+ story-based interviews to uncover unmet needs and surface the riskiest assumptions.
Launched a demand-validation campaign across LinkedIn to test pull, not just opinions.
Mapped the real pain: opaque salary ranges, multi-month hiring cycles, and a lack of growth opportunities.

Solution Validation

Validate the product without building the product

Built a no-code MVP - a mash-up of manual work and automated WhatsApp flows - to simulate the core matchmaking and skills-assessment experience without engineering a custom platform.
Ran 30+ experiments to optimize audience targeting and conversion funnels, and to validate the key customer and business assumptions before committing real build time.

“The fastest way to de-risk a startup isn't to build faster. It's to validate before you build at all - and a tiny, specific market beats a big, vague one every time.”

The Impact

From assumptions to traction - and a repeatable way to keep finding it

< 6 mo

Problem–Solution Fit

Reached in under six months, unlocking rapid, confident user growth.

1,000 / 60

Real traction, year one

Scaled to 1,000 active B2C users and 60 B2B customers within the first year.

30 mo

Product-Market Fit

Reached within the first 30 months since launch - on the back of the discovery framework, not luck.

Beyond the numbers, FOUND left with something more durable than a set of features: a scalable discovery framework that still underpins how the company evolves its product. We also coached both founders on product-led development and set up Product Operations - the internal processes, product tech stack, and knowledge management - so the team could keep making evidence-based calls long after our engagement.

Why This Matters For You

You can't out-build a bad bet - but you can out-learn it

In a crowded market, speed of building is a trap; speed of learning is the edge. FOUND didn't win by shipping first - it won by refusing to build anything until a painfully specific group of people proved they wanted it. A 500-person beachhead, 50+ interviews, and a WhatsApp MVP cost a fraction of a real platform, and de-risked every decision that came after. If you're sitting on an idea and a blank page, that's the cheapest insurance you can buy.