You can build it in a weekend. Can you sell it?
Anyone can ship a product now. What's rare is knowing who it's for, what they'd pay, and why they'd switch. We find out — by talking to real buyers in your market, in weeks, not quarters.
18 years · 338 studies · 111,715 respondents · ESOMAR member
The most expensive thing you can build is something nobody asked for
The fastest way to lose a year: build for six months, polish for three, launch, hear nothing, and only then start asking people what they actually wanted.
Building used to be the hard part. It isn't any more. You can have something running by tonight. The hard part was always the same thing it is now: convincing someone you've never met that what you made is worth their money.
That conversation goes better when you already know what they'd say. That's the entire job we do.
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What is customer validation research?
- Customer validation research is structured evidence-gathering with the people you intend to sell to — before or alongside building — to confirm the problem is real, the buyer is who you think, and the price is one they'd actually pay. It combines qualitative interviews (why people behave as they do) with quantitative testing (how many, how much, how likely). Done properly, it replaces founder assumption with recorded, citable evidence.
Four ways in. Fixed scope, fixed timeline.
Signal Check
Is this real, and is it real for the people you think?
- 8–12 in-depth interviews with your defined ICP, recruited and screened by us
- Senior researcher moderates every session — no junior hand-off
- Verdict memo: proceed, pivot, or park, with the evidence behind it
- Recordings and full transcripts
Willingness to Pay
Find the number before the market finds it for you.
- Quantitative pricing study, n=150–300 in-market buyers
- Van Westendorp price sensitivity + Gabor-Granger demand curve
- Acceptable range, optimal point, and revenue-maximizing point
- Segment cuts by company size, role, or buying stage
Positioning Test
Say the one thing that lands.
- Monadic test of 3–4 value propositions or messages
- Measures clarity, relevance, differentiation, and purchase intent
- Identifies which message wins, with which segment, and why
- Winning copy directions, evidenced
Investor Evidence Pack
Third-party proof for the deck.
- Market sizing built from primary data, not scraped reports
- Buyer demand evidence you can cite and attribute
- Competitive landscape and positioning gap
- Slide-ready, source-referenced
Need something between these? Tell us the decision you're facing and we'll size the smallest study that answers it.
Why founders come to us instead of the obvious alternatives
| Asking your network | AI-generated “research” | Traditional agency | GCR | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speaks to real, screened buyers | Sometimes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Free of politeness bias | No | n/a | Yes | Yes |
| Statistically usable | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Usable in an investor deck | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Priced for a startup | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Weeks, not quarters | Yes | Yes | Rarely | Yes |
We do use AI — to accelerate analysis. We do not use it to invent respondents. Every person in your study is a real, recruited, screened human. No synthetic panels, ever.
How it runs
How it runs
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Diagnose
Pin down the exact decision the study has to settle.
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Design
Build the smallest instrument that can answer it.
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Field
Talk to real, screened buyers in your market.
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Decode
Turn interviews and data into a defensible read.
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Decide
A verdict memo — proceed, pivot, or park.
The senior researcher who diagnoses your problem is the one who runs it. Start to finish.
Not our first launch
GCR has run 338 studies across 33 sectors over 18 years, with 111,715 respondents interviewed. We've done concept, pricing, brand and buyer research for companies including Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Betfair, Adidas, Coca-Cola and Abbott, and for early-stage teams with one product and one question.
Trusted by teams building and scaling brands
Case study
What this looks like when it works
The situation
A content-subscription company was rebuilding its new tier for lower-income segments in Colombia.
The assumption
The team believed a low-cost, two-person shared subscription package would work well.
What we found
The target profile confirmed that shared subscriptions like this break down once the two people's content preferences diverge substantially.
What changed
The team restructured the low-cost tier around a single, more compelling individual subscription for the validated target.
A shared low-cost subscription only works if two people want the same content. The data showed they rarely do.
Before you book
Questions founders ask
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How fast can you turn this around?
- It depends on the package and how fast we can recruit your specific audience — you get an exact date before you commit, not after. We field in parallel where possible, and we won't take a project we can't deliver on the date we promise.
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We're pre-launch and pre-revenue. Is this too early?
- It's the ideal moment. Validation is cheapest before the build, when changing your mind still costs nothing but a conversation.
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Can you reach our buyers? They're niche.
- Yes. Recruiting hard-to-reach B2B audiences — clinicians, IT directors, procurement leads, specialist trades — is standard work for us. Tell us who they are and we'll tell you honestly whether we can reach them.
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Can you research the US market?
- Yes — it's routine work. Our clients are based in the US and UK, and we've delivered research for Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Betfair, Abbott and Merck. We recruit and interview US buyers in English, digitally, and we add in-market fieldwork across Latin America when a client is expanding there.
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Is any of this AI-generated?
- No. AI speeds up our analysis. It never replaces a respondent. Every data point comes from a real, screened person.
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What do we actually receive?
- Findings tied to your decision, the raw material behind them (transcripts, data tables, recordings), and a live session where we walk you through what to do next.
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What if the research says the idea doesn't work?
- Then we tell you, plainly. That is the single most valuable outcome we can sell you, and it's usually the cheapest month you'll ever spend.
Talk to buyers before you talk to investors
Twenty minutes with a senior researcher. We'll pressure-test your assumption and tell you the smallest study that would settle it. No pitch.
