How I saved a company $1M - by not building a product.
Sometimes the best GTM decision is not launching at all.
A US-based founder approached me last year with his vision: to launch a smart baby scale and companion app designed to help mothers track their children's development and nutrition from birth, ultimately aiming to combat childhood obesity.
He had raised money and was ready to build.
Today, I wanted to share what happened next: a counterintuitive GTM story that saved the company from a million-dollar mistake.
We used just $5K in ad spend and a hypothesis-driven approach to test demand for the product.
The Traditional Hardware GTM Playbook
The conventional hardware GTM journey typically looks like this:
Develop comprehensive market research
Raise funding (usually millions for hardware)
Invest in concept/product design
Start early manufacturing
Then discover if people actually want it
Given the large upfront investment, the traditional approach made no sense to me.
I firmly believed we should be testing demand before making such a huge investment.
Turning the GTM Playbook Upside Down
Given that the product needed to be tested for its aesthetic appeal (after all, we wanted the scale and app to look attractive) as well as its functionality, normal market research methods like focus groups or surveys weren't going to provide accurate enough feedback.
We needed to try something different.
Here's what we built instead:
A compelling landing page
3D product concept, including a YouTube video
Targeted paid ad campaigns, focusing on mothers
Fast customer feedback loops
The product concept was elegant: a smart scale paired with an app that would track babies' nutrition, sleep, and feeding patterns. The killer feature? Snap a photo of your baby's meal, and the app would analyze its nutritional content, helping mothers make healthier choices for their little ones.
We ensured the scale looked great - (if you're not a parent, you may not have seen a baby scale before. But let me tell you, they are ugly).
We made sure ours was beautiful, functional, and stood out from the crowd.
Above: Product concept designs for app, smart scale and tape measure.
Copyright Thrive Baby
Lean GTM Testing Framework
Our streamlined approach focused on:
Visual Asset Development: Collaborating with a product designer on high-fidelity designs including 3D animations
Conversion Optimization: Building a landing page focused on value proposition testing, targeting different audiences
Targeted Campaign Structure: Investing $4,964 across segmented audiences including 'baby shower,' 'first-time mom,' 'newly wed,' etc.
Rapid Data Collection: Collecting additional feedback via a Typeform on the website to capture more data from our ICP, including price sensitivity
Campaign Performance Insights
We ran different campaigns on Meta including static ads as well as collaborations with 'mumfluencers' who would talk about the Thrive Baby scale and app and how it had changed their lives.
We ran eight ads in total, testing messaging, format, and targeting.
Image: One of the Thrive Baby Meta ads
In two months, we delivered:
375,170 impressions
4,258 qualified clicks
539 leads at $9.21 CAC
We then conducted a segment analysis on the target audience and started understanding our ICP in more detail:
The 'baby shower segment' showed the most efficient CAC at $7.86
The 'newly-wed cohort' had the highest engagement (1.18% CTR)
The largest but most expensive acquisition segment turned out to be 'first-time mothers' - which made sense, as they have the highest and most urgent need and are also the most sought after i.e. expensive
However, despite these great insights, after two months we only had 539 sign-ups instead of the 2,000+ we had hoped for.
The Million-Dollar GTM Insight
Why didn't more people sign up?
We had many theories, but the real breakthrough came from our pricing analysis: 82% of the target market wouldn't pay above $75, despite premium positioning and long-term value proposition (10-year product lifespan).
We knew the cheapest we could manufacture this product was $120 + $8 for the freemium app subscription.
We didn't have product ↔ market fit.
It was a hard fact and one that we did not want to hear, but the experiment had shown there was not enough demand to make Thrive Baby viable in its current form.
While we had hoped for a more successful result from the campaign, a traditional approach would have been much more expensive. Had we gone down the typical route, we would have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars:
$100-200K: Industrial design
$150-300K: Engineering
$50K-100K: App development
$200-500K: Tooling & initial production
By not launching, the total capital preserved was around $1M.
The pre-Seed funding the founder had raised could now be spent on product iterations to get to the right price point with the product.
Beyond Hardware: Universal GTM Principles
While this case study centers on hardware, these GTM principles apply universally. For any product launch, the key is finding the fastest path to market validation with the least capital at risk.
(And just to be clear, the ‘market’ validation can be ‘audience’ validation, ‘channel validation and so on..)
Framework for Lean GTM Testing
I have applied this experience across other products since, and the core principles have helped me focus on:
Rapid Data Acquisition: Using (paid) media for immediate market signals across segments. Testing messages and offer variations
MVP Validation: Testing value propositions without full product development
Segment Analysis: Identifying the right segment, pain point <> message fit, and channels before launching
Price Sensitivity Testing: Validating business model assumptions by testing pricing options
Feature Prioritisation: Aligning development with validated user needs and iterating
Strategic Implications
In the current market, ‘lean’ GTM is more important than ever. It is about figuring out the fastest way to get feedback from your audience and then adapting & iterating your product until you get it right.
Our $5K test prevented a potential $1M mistake, transforming a near-miss into valuable market intelligence that informed the next level of product iteration.
GTM Strategy Framework for Your Next Launch
To end, here are some ideas on how you can apply this approach to your GTM work:
Document your core GTM hypotheses
Then design minimal viable tests (ChatGPT is a great help here) on audience, message, offer
Establish clear success metrics before you get started
Adapt and be prepared to go where the market is, based on the data you gathered
And remember: Sometimes the best GTM strategy is knowing when to pivot or stop.
Bonus:
If you made it this far, here is the final product video we made for Thrive Baby