A decade of sprints, distilled
thoughtbot has run shaping sprints with founders and product teams for over a decade, across more than a thousand positive outcomes. What came out of those rooms is what the ten steps are made of.
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Turn a rough product idea into a build-ready plan
Pressure-test your idea with the process used by product experts. You'll be ready to build with confidence.
Free during open beta.
Learn what to build before you build it
Building faster isn’t an advantage if you’re building the wrong thing. A sprint helps you quickly determine what to build, with real research pulled in as you go.
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Validate the problem
Pressure-test your idea against real research instead of relying on assumptions.
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Know who you’re building for
Identify a specific audience you can reach, talk to, and learn from.
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Find your market opportunity
Understand the competitive landscape and where your product can stand apart.
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Define your first version
Focus on what you need to build and learn first, then organize everything else for later.
What to expect during your product sprint
ReadySetGo guides you through 10 steps, usually in one sitting. Bring any research or resources you already have, or come to it fresh.
You bring the idea
Type it the way you’d say it out loud. Whatever you’re assuming gets written down before anything is built on it.
Discovery: what has to happen
The path from a forgettable walk to one worth keeping, in four moves you can actually build against.
Shape: what you’re building first
The first version, settled: what it opens on, what ships now, and how you’ll know it worked.
Handoff: where to start
Four tasks small enough to start on Monday, each one something you can demo.
What you walk out with
One file you can hand to a developer or paste into an AI coding tool, with the reasoning still attached to every decision in it.
A decade of craft, in one product
thoughtbot has spent years helping teams challenge their assumptions, narrow ideas down, avoid expensive wrong turns, and work out what is actually worth building. This gives you access to that thinking.
Knowing when an answer is good enough
Understand, diverge, converge, prototype, test. The order matters because each step is only answerable once the one before it is settled, and knowing when it is settled is the part that takes judgment. A chat window improvises past both.
Everything else agrees with you
Ask any other tool what it thinks of your idea and it will find something encouraging to say. That is pleasant on a Tuesday. When you are deciding where the next six months of your life goes, agreement is the most expensive thing you can buy.
The team behind product work for
Questions
What people ask before their first sprint.
Many AI tools are designed to follow your lead. ReadySetGo challenges your ideas and assumptions like a strategic product consultant would. The result is a concept that’s been pressure-tested before you invest in building it.
Most sprints happen in one sitting, but you can move at your own pace. We even recommend stepping away occasionally to digest what you’ve learned and returning with a fresh perspective. Your progress is saved as you go.
No. ReadySetGo asks about people and problems, not stacks and schemas. It uses approachable language and explains unfamiliar product terms as you go. The one technical output is the build list at the end, written for whoever will build the product.
That’s a great place to start. ReadySetGo helps you turn a vague idea into a specific problem, customer, and product direction. You don’t need to arrive with answers, just something you care about building.
You validate and invalidate elements of your idea alongside ReadySetGo. It isn’t scoring your idea or deciding whether you should quit. Discovering that an assumption doesn’t hold up is a valuable outcome. It’s better to learn that now than after you’ve invested in building the wrong thing. Often, you’ll uncover something worth continuing to explore.
You’ll leave with a documented problem statement, your assumptions and what you’ve learned about them, the ideas you intentionally cut, and a build-ready task list. You can hand it to a developer or use it with an AI coding tool, and export it all as plain Markdown.
ReadySetGo is free during open beta for a limited time.
Get in touch
Beta feedback, a question the list above did not answer, or work you would like thoughtbot to take on.
Ideas people have run through a sprint
- A booking tool for dog groomers
- A fitness app for powerlifters
- A marketplace for vintage synths
- Invoicing for freelance designers
- A CRM for wedding photographers
- A meal planner for shift workers
- Scheduling for tattoo studios
- An inventory app for coffee roasters
- A rental platform for camera gear
- A reading tracker for book clubs
- Route planning for mobile mechanics
- A community for urban gardeners
Bring the idea. We'll bring the hard questions.
By the end you will know whether this is worth building, and exactly what to build first.
