---
title: "Foundation Sprint Magic Lenses: Storevine Retail Direction"
description: "Storevine Day 2 afternoon Magic Lenses evaluation of 5 approaches through 4 classic plus 1 custom lens; top bet and backup."
artifact: foundation-sprint-magic-lenses
version: "1.0"
repo_version: "2.15.0"
skill_version: "0.1.0"
created: 2026-05-19
status: sample
thread: storevine
context: "Storevine Day 2 PM (13:00-15:00 PT 2026-05-19); Magic Lenses evaluation; note-and-vote for top-bet supervote"
---

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

## Lenses

**4 classic lenses:**

- **Customer**: which approach does the target customer rate highest on weekly buying outcomes?
- **Pragmatic**: which approach can our 4-person pre-seed team actually deliver in 12 weeks?
- **Growth**: which approach reaches the most retailers in the target band in 24 months?
- **Money**: which approach has the best unit economics path to break-even?

**1 custom lens (required per skill spec):**

- **Trust**: which approach builds enduring retailer trust given that specialty retailers are skeptical of vendor-funded models and dashboards-that-promise-magic?

The Trust lens was added because three of the 31 customer interviews surfaced explicit distrust of "yet another retail SaaS" and one interviewee specifically said "if you sell my data to brands, I will cancel." Trust is the deal-breaker lens for this customer segment.

## Lens Scoring

Each approach scored 1-5 per lens. Higher is better.

### Customer Lens (How would the target customer rate this for weekly buying outcomes?)

| Approach | Score | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Solo Analyst | 5 | Dedicated relationship most closely resembles "trusted consultant" framing customers responded to |
| 2. Pooled Analyst | 4 | Quality of brief is high; relationship continuity is lower but acceptable |
| 3. Templates | 3 | Risk of generic-feeling outputs; customers might lose trust if templates surface |
| 4. Software + Optional Analyst | 2 | The merchandiser interviewees said they don't have time for self-serve; this rebadged self-serve |
| 5. Vendor-Funded | 2 | The "you sell my data" objection is real and severe |

### Pragmatic Lens (Can our 4-person team deliver this in 12 weeks?)

| Approach | Score | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Solo Analyst | 4 | Devon's data layer + Mei + Carlos as first 2 analysts; can ship in 12 weeks |
| 2. Pooled Analyst | 3 | Requires 4-6 analyst hires; not realistic in 12 weeks for pre-seed |
| 3. Templates | 4 | Devon's data layer + template authoring is the dominant work; Carlos authors with Tasha designing |
| 4. Software + Optional Analyst | 3 | Self-serve UI is more software-heavy than the team has capacity for |
| 5. Vendor-Funded | 1 | Requires two-sided market motion; we don't have vendor relationships; complete distraction |

### Growth Lens (How many retailers in the target band in 24 months?)

| Approach | Score | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Solo Analyst | 2 | Throughput cap at 8-12 per analyst; 24-month ceiling is ~80-120 retailers with 10-15 analysts |
| 2. Pooled Analyst | 4 | Pool model + sector specialization can serve 200-300 retailers in 24 months |
| 3. Templates | 5 | Template-leveraged review supports 30-50 per analyst; 24-month ceiling is 400-600 retailers |
| 4. Software + Optional Analyst | 5 | Self-serve scaling has no human cap |
| 5. Vendor-Funded | 4 | Free-to-retailer accelerates acquisition but unit economics are vendor-side |

### Money Lens (Best unit economics path to break-even?)

| Approach | Score | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Solo Analyst | 2 | Thin margins; analyst loaded cost is structurally close to ceiling |
| 2. Pooled Analyst | 3 | Improves leverage but still labor-bound |
| 3. Templates | 5 | Strong leverage; software does most work; analyst-review touchpoint is the differentiator |
| 4. Software + Optional Analyst | 4 | Software margins are great; analyst tier is a high-margin add |
| 5. Vendor-Funded | 3 | Two-sided revenue can be great but at risk of customer-trust capture |

### Trust Lens (Custom) (Enduring retailer trust given specialty-retail vendor skepticism?)

| Approach | Score | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Solo Analyst | 5 | Named-analyst relationship is highest-trust shape |
| 2. Pooled Analyst | 4 | Acceptable; sector-specialist analysts compensate for non-named relationship |
| 3. Templates | 4 | Good if analyst review is visible; weaker if templates feel generic |
| 4. Software + Optional Analyst | 2 | Looks like another vendor SaaS; loses the trust differentiator |
| 5. Vendor-Funded | 1 | Direct conflict of interest; specialty retailers see vendor-funded as adversarial |

## Aggregate Scores

| Approach | Customer | Pragmatic | Growth | Money | Trust | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3. Templates | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 21 |
| 2. Pooled Analyst | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 18 |
| 1. Solo Analyst | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 18 |
| 4. Software + Optional Analyst | 2 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 16 |
| 5. Vendor-Funded | 2 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 11 |

## Note and Vote: Top Bet Supervote

The aggregate has Approach 3 (Templates) leading 21-18-18. The team ran a 20-min note-and-vote to confirm the top bet and select the backup. Mei's supervote ratified:

**Top bet: Approach 3 (Analyst-Authored Templates).** The Templates approach scores best on Pragmatic + Growth + Money while staying acceptable on Customer + Trust. The two top-on-Customer-and-Trust approaches (1 Solo + 2 Pooled) lose decisively on Growth and Money; in a pre-seed context, the team must reach product-market fit signal before runway runs out, so Templates' leverage is critical.

**Backup: Approach 2 (Pooled Analyst Team).** If the templates produce briefs that customers experience as generic (Customer drops to 2 or below), the team falls back to Approach 2 with stronger human review and accepts the lower Growth ceiling.

**Explicitly rejected:** Approach 4 (Software + Optional Analyst) violates Decision Principle 3 from Differentiation; Approach 5 (Vendor-Funded) violates the Trust lens for this customer segment.

## Top Bet and Backup Statement

**Top bet:** Storevine ships managed-intelligence as analyst-authored templates: subvertical-specific brief templates populated by software from customer POS + accounting data, reviewed by a Storevine retail-specialist analyst, delivered Monday morning for 15-minute reading. Pricing $800-1000 MRR per retailer. One analyst can serve 30-50 retailers.

**Backup plan:** If the design-partner pilot signals that template-driven briefs feel generic (NPS below 30 or customer-judged actionability below 4 of 5 by week 3), Storevine pivots to Approach 2 (Pooled Analyst Team) where analysts author briefs from scratch with sector rotation. Trade-off: lower margins, lower scale ceiling, but stronger customer-judged quality.

## Decider Checkpoint

**Mei sign-off required to proceed to Founding Hypothesis (Day 2 end).**

- [x] Mei confirms the 5 lenses including the custom Trust lens.
- [x] Mei confirms the per-lens scoring and rationale.
- [x] Mei accepts the top bet (Approach 3 Templates) and the backup (Approach 2 Pooled).
- [x] Mei agrees to the explicit rejection of Approach 4 and Approach 5.
- [x] Mei commits Storevine to the top-bet direction for the June 2 design-partner pilot.

**Signed:** Mei, 2026-05-19 15:15 PT
