A proposition reaches real customers and returns sign-ups, so desirability is settled by the market rather than by the most confident person in the room.
Back to all proofs
From an internal idea to 960 real sign-ups at $2.33 each
Client
Date
$10B+ European telecommunications group
09/2026
The challenge
A $10B+ European telecommunications group develops new consumer propositions inside a small innovation team. Ideas were scanned for, sized, priced and argued on desk evidence alone. Nothing in the process produced live demand data, so nobody could say which propositions real customers would sign up for, or at what price.
The solution
FifthRow deployed a market-to-concept engine. A signal or an idea goes in; a sized, priced, competitively positioned proposition comes out, and the ones worth testing go to real customers behind a neutral brand with sign-ups counted.
42,575
analyst-hours equivalent, 49 FTEs960
real customer sign-ups at $2.33 eachLive market testsTwo propositions, four European markets
Customer demand evidence960 sign-ups from 325,313 impressions
Cost per sign-up$2.33 against a $55.21 industry average
Standing watchesFive scans delivered weekly, unasked
Analyst-hours equivalent42,575 hours saved; equivalent to 49 FTEs
An innovation team only finds what it has time to look for. Five watches were set up on the areas the team builds propositions in, and they arrive weekly whether or not anyone remembers to ask.
Core Activities
- Set up weekly watches on the areas the team builds propositions in
- Returned startups, funding, partnerships and technology moves in one read
- Put a regulatory watch on the same weekly rhythm as the rest
- Delivered each report into an owner's inbox without anyone starting it
- Held one structure every week, so a week can be read against the last
The Results
A standing view of what is moving in the team's areas, arriving on a fixed day in a fixed shape, so a quiet quarter no longer means a blind one and nobody has to schedule the scan.
15 weeks
of weekly delivery, unbrokenThe gap between a signal and something you can test is where most ideas die. This is the work that closes it: the customer, the job, the pricing and the hypothesis the whole thing rests on.
Core Activities
- Turned a raw idea into a defined concept with a customer and a job
- Mapped the customer journey and the pain the proposition removes
- Tested the hypothesis an idea rests on before any build effort
- Produced pricing options and requirement documents from the same evidence
- Read the wider forces that would help or block the proposition
The Results
A proposition defined well enough to put in front of a customer: who it is for, what it does for them, what it costs and what has to be true for it to work, with the evidence behind each of those attached.
6,247
source-verified research questions answeredA proposition that nobody has sized is an opinion. This stream puts a number and a competitive picture behind each one, in the same shape every time so that propositions can be ranked against each other.
Core Activities
- Sized the addressable market top-down and bottom-up for each proposition
- Mapped the competitor set already meeting the same customer need
- Read competitor pricing and packaging against the proposition being formed
- Tracked category market share and the direction it is moving
- Returned every read in one structure, so propositions compare directly
The Results
A sized, positioned view per proposition with a market number, a competitor set and a price point attached, which is what a portfolio conversation can be held against rather than a set of separately argued cases.
6,001
analyst-hours equivalent, sizing and competitor workAlongside the propositions it was building, the group was looking at ventures it might back or partner with. Each one arrives as a single memo rather than as a folder of separate analyses.
Core Activities
- Assessed external ventures the group was weighing as investments or partners
- Sized the market, the moat and the defensibility behind each one
- Modelled financial performance, exit paths and return trajectory
- Read the team, the operating capacity and the risk register
- Returned each as one memo, in the same structure every time
The Results
An investment memo per venture that a committee can read end to end, built to one standard so two ventures can be compared rather than each argued on whatever evidence its sponsor happened to gather.
1,599
research questions answered across three venture memosThe point of all of it was to stop guessing. Two propositions were built into live microsites, localised, and put in front of real customers behind a neutral brand, with sign-ups counted.
Core Activities
- Built each proposition into a live microsite with pricing and a sign-up path
- Produced A/B variants of every page and ran them side by side
- Ran the tests as A/B pairs in the local language of each market, four languages across six microsites
- Ran paid campaigns behind a neutral brand, with no exposure for the group
- Reported sign-ups, cost per sign-up and funnel drop-off in a live dashboard
The Results
Demand evidence from actual customers in four European markets: 960 sign-ups from 325,313 impressions at $2.33 a sign-up, against an industry average of $55.21, plus a first cohort of interested customers the team could go and talk to.
960
real customer sign-ups at $2.33 eachWhat it proved
Six people in one innovation team ran the work across five months: 454 studies, 978 analysis steps, 18,931 sources and 11,454 research questions answered from them. Two of the propositions that came out of it were built into microsites, localised, and put in front of real customers in four European markets. They returned 960 sign-ups from 325,313 impressions, at $2.33 a sign-up against an industry average of $55.21.
The team came out of it holding market evidence instead of internal argument. One proposition cleared the industry benchmark by a wide margin; the other returned a clear negative, and that answer arrived just as quickly and for the same small media budget, before anything was built. Five watches were left running weekly on the areas the team works in. Across those 454 studies the platform records 42,575 analyst-hours saved, the equivalent of 49 full-time analysts.
Results
| Metric | Benchmark | Result | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demand evidence per proposition | Propositions judged without customer data | 960 sign-ups from 325,313 impressions | Desirability settled on market data |
| Cost per sign-up | Industry average of $55.21 | $2.33 per sign-up | 23× cheaper per sign-up |
| Recurring market reporting | Compiled by hand when someone had time | Five watches delivered weekly, unasked | Reporting runs without being started |
| Analyst-hours saved | Six people researching alongside their day jobs | 42,575 hours across 454 studies | Equivalent of adding 49 full-time analysts |
A concept that does not convert says so within weeks and for the price of a small media budget, long before anyone commits to building it.
One proposition runs in several markets and languages at once, so demand can be compared market by market instead of inferred from a single test.
Tests run behind a neutral brand, so an unproven proposition can meet real customers without putting the group's name against it.
Signal and regulatory watches arrive on a fixed day without anyone starting them, so scanning survives a quarter when everyone is busy.
The same platform carries an idea from first signal to a live test, so nothing has to be re-briefed or rebuilt between stages.
An entire investment team building its own research agents in one day
Client
Corporate venture arm of a $10B+ global electronics manufacturer
Date
08/2026
11,805
analyst-hours equivalent, 8 FTEsFrom 20 person-days per topic to under an hour per venture
Client
$10B+ global optics group, corporate venture unit
Date
09/2026
Under 1 hour
market assessment, from 20 person-daysFor Enterprises
ProofSee all
From a standing start to an AI venture serving small businesses
From 72 patents to 4 commercialisation-ready technologies
Cutting a four-month research cycle to six weeks across five validation workstreams
From a weekly newsletter to a self-running innovation radar
A full year's validated-concept target, met in the first quarter
A utility innovation lab that answers its own questions in a day
Finding the next high-growth US metro in five days
FifthRow – The Agentic Consultancy
Copyright 2026 FifthRow Inc., Privacy policy