From a category scan to test-ready concepts, run by one person

Client

Date

$10B+ global hygiene and health group, corporate venturing unit

09/2026

The challenge

The corporate venturing unit of a $10B+ global hygiene and health group is asked to find, build and test new businesses in and around its parent's categories. One person carried the research behind that mandate: scanning categories, generating and screening ideas, building concepts, and sizing up the companies already operating in the space.

The solution

FifthRow deployed its venture pipeline as a set of systems the unit ran itself. A category goes in; whitespace, ranked ideas, full concept dossiers and investment memos on the companies already in that space come out, every one of them built to the same evidence standard.

100,246

analyst-hours equivalent, 117 FTEs

9 concepts

built to one evidence standard

Venture funnelScan to test-ready concept, one system set

Concepts built9 dossiers, roughly 90 minutes each

External candidates11 companies assessed in-house

Evidence base12,414 research questions answered from sources

Analyst-hours equivalent100,246 hours saved; equivalent to 117 FTEs

01 — CATEGORY & WHITESPACE SCANNING

A venturing unit cannot pick a bet before it knows where the gaps are. Scanning runs across a category and its adjacencies, returning what is moving, who is already there and where nobody is.

Core Activities

Read what is shifting across social, technological, economic, environmental and political conditions in a category
Mapped the competitive field and the substitutes already serving the same need
Sized the addressable market and the value pools inside it, with the evidence attached
Identified where demand is unmet rather than where supply is crowded
Returned every category in the same structure, so one scan can be set beside another

The Results

A structured read of a category, its adjacencies and its gaps, produced in an afternoon and carrying the evidence behind every figure, which is what a venture bet gets argued from rather than a headline growth rate.

9,168

analyst-hours equivalent, category and whitespace scanning

02 — IDEA GENERATION & SCREENING

Ideas are easy to produce and hard to rank. This is where a whitespace becomes a scored, ordered shortlist that survives a challenge from the people who have already tried things in the category.

Core Activities

Generated candidate ideas directly from the identified gaps, not from a workshop backlog
Fed the unit's own past learnings in as an input, so known dead ends are not proposed again
Mapped the jobs to be done and the customer segments behind each idea
Scored each one on feasibility, on willingness to pay, and on the parent's own right to win
Merged near-duplicates and ranked the survivors, with the reasoning attached to each

The Results

A ranked shortlist with an argument behind every position, so the choice of what to take forward is made on evidence rather than on whoever advocates hardest for their own idea.

15 to 3

ideas narrowed to a test-ready shortlist

03 — CONCEPT BUILDING

A shortlisted idea is still a sentence. Concept building turns each one into a dossier a venture board can read: who it is for, what it is worth, how it makes money and what would stop it.

Core Activities

Turned a one-line idea into a full concept, with personas, jobs and a value proposition
Sized the market for that specific concept rather than for the category around it
Set out the business model, the revenue pathways and the pricing logic
Checked the regulatory position and the technology readiness behind the concept
Returned each one as a venture summary and pitch material, in the same shape every time

The Results

Nine concept dossiers built to one standard, each carrying its own market size, business model, regulatory position and risks, which is what makes a set of concepts comparable instead of a folder of pitches.

~90 minutes

from a one-line idea to a full concept

04 — EXTERNAL CANDIDATE DILIGENCE

Building is only one of the ways a venturing unit can enter a space. The same evidence standard was pointed at the companies already operating in it, so building, partnering and buying are weighed on comparable ground.

Core Activities

Produced full investment memos on external candidates, from thesis to exit pathway
Assessed each one on positioning, moat, leadership capacity and capital trajectory
Mapped patent and trademark position alongside the commercial case
Tracked what candidate companies launch, hire, partner on and announce
Ran side-by-side comparisons, so two candidates are read against one framework

The Results

A diligence pack on any company in the space, produced in about an hour and to the same depth every time, which lets a small unit look at a whole field rather than at the two or three companies it had time for.

30,127

analyst-hours equivalent, external candidate diligence

05 — MARKET-TEST PREPARATION

A concept that never meets a customer stays an opinion. The shortlisted concepts were taken through to landing pages built on a validation structure, ready for a market to react to.

Core Activities

Took each shortlisted concept through to its own positioning, copy and pricing logic
Built a landing page per concept on a conversion-tested structure rather than a blank template
Kept the three pages distinct enough to read as genuinely different offers
Left the pages editable by the unit itself, so wording stays with the people who know the market
Held the concept dossier and the page on one evidence base, so the page claims what the research supports

The Results

Every concept on the shortlist arrives as something a market can respond to rather than as a document, which removes the build step that normally sits between deciding to test an idea and being able to.

3 of 3

shortlisted concepts taken to test-ready pages

What it proved

A category question went in and came back as fifteen ranked ideas, a shortlist of three, nine full concept dossiers and three landing pages a market could react to. Alongside that, six investment memos and four company deep dives covered the businesses already operating in the same space. Across the engagement that is 556 runs and 1,224 analysis steps, 72,280 sources and 12,414 research questions answered from them.

The unit came out holding a venture funnel it can run rather than commission: a category scanned, an idea ranked against feasibility and willingness to pay, a concept built to a dossier, a page put in front of a market. Because internal concepts and external companies are assessed on the same standard, a build-or-buy question is settled on comparable ground instead of on two incomparable pieces of work. Across those 556 runs the platform records 100,246 analyst-hours saved, the equivalent of 117 full-time analysts. The figure is that large because one person ran the unit's entire research load through the platform over five months.

Results

Metric	Benchmark	Result	Improvement
Output reliability	The unit's own completed venture work	Directionally consistent with it	Criterion the unit set in advance was met
Concept development	A dossier assembled by hand from separate research tasks	Roughly 90 minutes per full concept	Built in an afternoon, not a work package
Shortlisting	Ideas argued on judgement alone	Scored on feasibility, willingness to pay and right to win	Shortlist carries its own reasoning
External candidate assessment	A memo per company, worked up manually	About an hour per investment memo	Whole candidate field covered, not a sample
Analyst-hours saved	One person carrying the unit's research	100,246 hours across 556 runs	Equivalent of adding 117 full-time analysts

SELF-CONTAINED FUNNEL

One evidence base carries a category question from scan through ideation to a concept that can be tested, so nothing is lost in a hand-off.

EVIDENCE-LED SHORTLISTING

Ideas are ranked on feasibility, willingness to pay and the company's own right to win, so a shortlist can be defended rather than only asserted.

BUILD-OR-BUY ON ONE STANDARD

Internal concepts and external companies are assessed against the same evidence standard, so an entry decision is made on comparable ground.

ONE-OPERATOR REACH

A single person runs the research load a venture team would carry, so a small unit covers a whole category instead of the corner of it there was time for.

TEST-READY OUTPUT

A chosen concept arrives as a page a market can react to, so validation starts without a separate build step in between.

REUSABLE METHOD

The scanning, ideation, concept and diligence systems stay in place, so the next category starts from a working method rather than a blank brief.