---
title: "Foundation Sprint Founding Hypothesis: Workbench Debugging Toolchain"
description: "Workbench Day 2 end capstone artifact: canonical Founding Hypothesis sentence + assumption scorecard + recommended next test."
artifact: foundation-sprint-founding-hypothesis
version: "1.0"
repo_version: "2.15.0"
skill_version: "0.1.0"
created: 2026-05-22
status: sample
thread: workbench
context: "Workbench Day 2 end (15:30-16:30 PT 2026-05-22); Founding Hypothesis spine artifact ratified by Decider"
---

<!-- PM-Skills | https://github.com/product-on-purpose/pm-skills | Apache 2.0 -->

## Founding Hypothesis (Canonical Strict Template)

**If we help** senior site reliability engineers at Series B-D US growth-stage startups with significant distributed-systems complexity **solve** the 5-20 minute disorientation phase at the start of production incidents (when the SRE is juggling 5-7 dashboards trying to figure out what is actually happening) **with** a real-time multi-source aggregator that pulls live data from their existing Datadog / Honeycomb / Sentry / Grafana, auto-correlates the trace + state + dependency picture, and presents one screen optimized for the disorientation phase, **they will choose it over** the full observability platforms (Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace), tracing specialists (Honeycomb, Lightstep, Sentry), open-source stacks (Grafana + Prometheus + Loki + Tempo + Jaeger), logs-first tools (Splunk, Sumo Logic), SRE workflow tools (PagerDuty, Incident.io, Rootly), internal homegrown dashboards, and the dominant "multi-tool juggling" status-quo **because our solution is** the only tool optimized exclusively for the incident-time disorientation phase, designed in SRE vocabulary, augmenting (not replacing) their existing observability investment, and deployable in under 30 seconds without platform-team approval.

## Why We Believe This

1. The 19 SRE interviews showed disorientation-phase MTTR penalty is consistent across Series B-D companies; the problem is structural to the band, not anecdotal.
2. The "multi-tool juggling" status-quo is the dominant alternative, not Datadog-as-single-product. Workbench competes against a behavior, not a product, which is structurally easier.
3. The "augment don't replace" principle removes the largest objection from SRE teams who have already invested in Datadog or Honeycomb; this lowers acquisition friction substantially.
4. Priya's Datadog product experience + Marcus's Splunk tracing background give honest read on what real-time aggregation will and won't work; we're not hand-waving the technical risk.
5. Jin's weekly on-call exposure gives us continuous reality-check on whether what we're building maps to actual incident-time cognition.

## What Could Prove Us Wrong

| Disconfirming evidence to look for | Pre-test commitment |
|---|---|
| API rate limits from Datadog / Honeycomb during incidents make real-time aggregation unreliable | If aggregation fails in design-partner pilot during 2+ actual incidents, pivot to backup (Approach 3 Replay-First) |
| SREs don't actually open Workbench at incident time; they default back to familiar tools | If usage < 50% of design-partner incidents in 4 weeks, re-evaluate product surface |
| The "one screen" claim breaks for incidents that span 10+ services; SRE still needs source tools | If 30%+ of incidents require source-tool dive-through, the differentiator weakens; re-architect or scope tighter |
| SREs reject "yet another tool" framing despite augment positioning | If sales conversations consistently die on "we just don't want another tool," messaging or positioning needs reshape |
| Pricing model (per-SRE seat or per-incident) doesn't match buyer expectations | If pricing conversation kills design-partner conversion, re-test model |

## Assumption Scorecard

| # | Assumption | Risk | Evidence quality | Pilot scorecard? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Real-time multi-source API aggregation is reliable enough during incidents (Datadog + Honeycomb + Sentry + Grafana APIs hold up under incident-time query load) | HIGH | Low (untested in production) | Primary row |
| A2 | SREs actually use Workbench at incident-time vs reverting to existing tools out of muscle memory | HIGH | Low (untested; depends on UX + onboarding) | Yes |
| A3 | Auto-correlation across 4 disparate API shapes produces a coherent unified view, not a Frankenstein dashboard | HIGH | Medium (Marcus's Splunk experience suggests yes) | Yes |
| A4 | The "augment don't replace" positioning resolves the "yet another tool" objection in sales | MEDIUM | Medium (interview signal positive) | No |
| A5 | Series B-D companies are willing to pay per-SRE-seat pricing at $150-$300/month | MEDIUM | Medium (interview signal; Priya's Datadog price-sensitivity intuition) | No |
| A6 | Sub-30-second setup is real (not "30 seconds after platform-team approves the API key") | MEDIUM | Medium (technically straightforward; depends on customer-side API-key generation) | Yes |
| A7 | The Series B-D band is large enough for a viable business at $150-$300 MRR per SRE | LOW | High (TAM math: 1000+ Series B-D US companies with 5+ SREs each) | No |

**Highest-risk assumption (primary pilot scorecard row): A1.** If real-time API aggregation cannot reliably handle incident-time query loads (when SREs are simultaneously hitting upstream tools), the entire top bet collapses. A1 is testable during the first design-partner pilot's first actual production incident.

## Recommended Next Test

**Design Sprint?** No, not at this stage. The Workbench top bet is technical-feasibility-bound first, not UX-bound. A Design Sprint after design-partner conversations have happened may be appropriate to refine the one-screen UX, but the immediate next test is technical.

**Recommendation: Design-partner pilot with the Series C fintech (Jin's employer) starting 2026-06-09.** Two-week setup + observation window followed by 4-week active pilot. Pilot mechanics:

- Week 1-2: Setup. Configure API connections to the fintech's existing Datadog + Sentry + Grafana. Establish incident-detection trigger. Workbench team is on-call to monitor first incidents.
- Week 3: Observation pilot. Workbench is available during incidents but not promoted to primary; SRE team uses normal tools and notes whether they reach for Workbench voluntarily.
- Week 4-6: Active pilot. Workbench is promoted to "try first" position in the SRE team's incident response playbook. Workbench team conducts weekly retros with on-call SREs.

A Design Sprint can follow the pilot if the one-screen UX needs structural rework (likely; Ari is already sketching). For v0.1, the operational pilot is the next test.

## Decider Checkpoint

**Priya final sign-off required to ratify the sprint output.**

- [x] Priya reads the Founding Hypothesis sentence aloud and confirms she would say this publicly to design-partner candidates and to seed-round investors.
- [x] Priya commits to closing the Series C fintech design-partner conversation within 2 weeks (by 2026-06-05) to start the pilot 2026-06-09.
- [x] Priya accepts A1 (real-time API aggregation reliability) as the highest-risk assumption to test first.
- [x] Priya commits to the backup plan (Approach 3 Replay-First) as the explicit pivot if A1 fails.
- [x] Priya accepts the success criteria from the brief have been met: single Founding Hypothesis, top bet + backup, assumption scorecard, public commitability.

**Signed:** Priya (founder, PM), 2026-05-22 16:30 PT

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The Foundation Sprint concludes. Workbench moves to design-partner conversion + seed-round preparation tracks next.
