Pre-build strategy consulting
Build the right thing.
Before you build anything.
Most founders waste months building the wrong thing. DLC helps you figure out what's actually worth building. Before you write a single line of code.
Fixed fee. No hourly billing. No long-term commitment required.
The problem
Most founders build something nobody wants.
Most products fail before they launch. Founders spend months building something the market never asked for, targeting someone who was never going to buy it. By the time you find out, the runway is gone.
01
Wrong audience
Confusing who pays for the product with who actually uses it is one of the most common and most expensive early mistakes.
02
Over-built MVP
Shipping too much before validating the core loop wastes runway and delays real market signal.
03
Missed opportunity
The real opportunity is almost never the obvious one. Adjacent markets are often bigger, less crowded, and more urgent.
How DLC works
Two phases. One question answered: what's actually worth building?
A structured process that validates your idea first, then defines exactly what to build. You leave with strategic clarity and a testable MVP concept.
Phase 1 — Validate
Is this idea worth building?
— Stakeholder interviews & vision alignment
— Market & competitive landscape scan
— Adjacent opportunity identification
— Real user discovery interviews
— Acquisition potential & acquirer scan
— Regulatory & compliance flags
— Strategic synthesis + pivot recommendation
Phase 2 — Concept
Exactly what do you build first?
— MVP scope definition
— Ruthless feature prioritization
— Information architecture
— Wireflows (annotated concept sketches)
— Investor-ready strategic rationale
Why DLC
The combination almost no boutique firm has.
M&A + investor lens
Every product decision is evaluated for value, positioning, and acquisition potential. Before you commit to building.
Signal-first research
Not six weeks of analysis. A two-hour scan can validate or kill a hypothesis. DLC goes deep only on what earns it.
10+ years product & UX
Healthcare, B2B SaaS, finance, consumer platforms. Pattern recognition that saves founders months.
The pivot conversation
DLC doesn't just surface pivots, it walks in with the reframe already built and the evidence to make it land.
Transparent pricing
Fixed fees. Milestone payments. Prices are public. No "contact us for a quote." No competitor does this.
Pre-build only
DLC doesn't do execution. That focus keeps the value entirely on getting the strategy right.
Case study
When the real opportunity isn't obvious.
A partially built app with 0 users. Four months later, 132 whitelisted users and a product being sold to partners.
01
The situation
A startup had a monolith social app built for shopping, chatting, and broadcasting. They wanted to add real estate virtual tours on top of it, reusing their proprietary AR software.
02
What we found
The existing app was too cumbersome to reuse. The real opportunity was a standalone real estate touring app: focused, simple, built for the agents who needed it most.
03
The outcome
MVP shipped in four months. 132 whitelisted users onboarded. Product sold to partners for whitelisting.
Real Estate · AR · Product Strategy · MVP
"In less than a year, her impact on our processes, strategy, and mobile product portfolio has been immeasurable."
— Daniel J., VP of Product
Services & investment
Two products. Fixed fees. No surprises.
Priced on outcomes. The right question isn't what this costs. It's what it costs to build the wrong thing.
Discovery Sprint
2–3 days
Surfaces bad assumptions, clarifies the real product vision, and ends with a clear brief. You'll know exactly what to build and why, even if you never hire DLC again.
$2,500
Fixed fee
Product Strategy
3–5 weeks
Deep strategy work covering user definition, feature prioritization, and MVP scoping. Culminating in wireflows. A buildable, defensible plan you can take to investors or a dev team.
$18K–$28K
Fixed fee · milestone payments
What it costs to not waste six months and $200K building the wrong thing.
40% to start · 30% at midpoint · 30% at completion
About
Jessica Morales
I think about product the way investors think about businesses. What is this worth, who would acquire it, and what does the market actually need? That combination of M&A lens, product strategy, and UX fluency is rare. I started DLC because too many founders burn their runway building the wrong thing. I want to help you avoid that.
UX Strategy & Management
Nielsen Norman Group · 10+ years
M&A, Business Scaling & Valuations
Epic Elite · Roland Frasier
Customer Retention & Conversion
CXL
Healthcare & regulated industries
Pattern recognition from real deployments
"In less than a year, her impact on our processes, strategy, and mobile product portfolio has been immeasurable."
— Daniel J., VP of Product
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