The Client: IDnow

IDnow is a German-based startup that provides identity verification and digital KYC solutions powered by advanced machine learning technology. They serve industries requiring secure and efficient identity verification, such as Financial Services, Telecommunications, and Gaming, with products designed to support a wide range of applications from customer onboarding to fraud prevention.

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The Mission

Product People was brought on board at IDnow to support our Champion, the Head of Product, in assessing the product-market fit for a new region. It posed unique challenges, with competitors and new market needs diverging significantly from those in areas where IDnow had previously established a presence.

Our primary objective was to enable the leadership team to make critical business decisions in the new market. We were tasked with the following:

• Provide critical insights that would inform their decision-making process, helping to identify both opportunities and risks associated with entering this new market
• Assist the Champion in gaining a comprehensive understanding of the current status quo, focusing on ongoing developments and preparations essential for achieving GTM readiness

Our involvement was pivotal in ensuring that IDnow was strategically positioned to navigate the complexities of this new market, facilitating a more informed approach to expansion.

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Our Main Quest: Assess Product-Market Fit

Phase One: Onboard Quickly

We mobilized swiftly to collect insights, tapping into a network of stakeholders with pertinent market experience and gathering an overview that could be validated further. While doing so, we also took the opportunity to implement documentation structures that were scalable, easy to use, and valuable given the team’s priority focuses.

Immediate Deliverables

1. A centralized hub for all relevant documentation: We resolved a previously fragmented collection of insights into a unified ‘go-to’ dashboard to document market learnings, link to related materials from other teams, and stay on top of ongoing initiatives.
2. Collective hypotheses from seasoned experts and initial research: We formulated hypotheses on opportunities in the market based on interviews with stakeholders with direct industry experience, analysis of historic sales data, and desk research of the domain.
3. Status updates of relevant developments and preparations: To aid in streamlining initiatives owned by other teams related to the new market, we compiled a comprehensive status update on all relevant work to evaluate product readiness and support leadership’s decision-making towards potential next steps.

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Phase Two: Validate Hypotheses with Dedicated Discovery

We conducted extensive research through interviews with domain experts and targeted competitor analysis; this allowed us to refine potential opportunities and identify risks that warranted deeper investigation.

In our work, we sought to understand the market’s customer segments in the financial services sector, exploring their needs, pains, and motivations.

We also aimed to identify the most salient competitors and focused our research on distinct aspects of identity verification as a product, allowing for the obtention of a granular understanding of IDnow’s competitors’ strengths and vulnerabilities.

Final Deliverables

1. Market Trends and Regulations: From our in-depth research and conversations with domain experts at Gartner, we produced findings on pertinent market trends, compliance, and regulations.
2. Competitive Analysis: We explored the competitive landscape in depth, creating a robust overview of our findings, which provided the client with a strong understanding of competitors’ strengths and vulnerabilities.
3. C-Level Presentations: We prepared two presentations for the C-Level, summarizing the takeaways, providing supporting evidence, and enabling leadership discussions to determine their next steps as a company.

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Our Side Quests: Bonus Achievements

As Interim Product Managers, we were able to accomplish several mini-missions that were peripheral to our primary focus:

• Create standardized guidelines to conduct exit interviews with customers
  • Inspired by best practices learned from our experience working with many different clients, we built on existing IDnow processes to create a lightweight and effective process to set up, conduct, and digest insights from customer exit interviews.
  • We handed these templates over & trained the IDnow team to implement this moving forward.
• Support ongoing preparations for product readiness
  • Given our focus on the new market assessment, we were able to jump into discussions and monitor the progress of related developments while the Champion was otherwise occupied; this enabled him to focus on other priorities.

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Mission Achievements: Delivered Outcomes

💡 Product market fit assessment detailing specific hypotheses for potential opportunities and the detailed discovery findings that eventually (in)validated them.

💡 Detailed analysis of the market and competitor landscape.

💡 Structured, comprehensive documentation of the new market opportunity that was designed for convenience to other stakeholders and easy maintenance by the product team.