The validation for what comes next.
The discipline of building the right thing: validated propositions, strong engagement architecture, and products designed to endure.
The opportunity in front of founders has never been larger. AI-assisted development and no-code platforms have reduced build times by up to 70%. A product that took six months to create two years ago can now be produced in six weeks. The ability to bring an idea to life — quickly, affordably, and at quality — has been transformed. That's genuinely exciting.
But the failure rate hasn't moved. 80–95% of new products still fail within their first year. The primary cause isn't the technology. It's that the product was built before the proposition was validated — before anyone tested whether this is the right thing to build, for the right audience, with a clear reason they'd choose it over what already exists. AI has made it significantly faster and cheaper to build the wrong product. The discipline that happens before build has never been more commercially critical.
This is what the research consistently shows: 42% of failed startups cite "no market need" as the primary cause. Not funding. Not team. Not technology. The product solved a problem the team cared about — not the one customers were willing to pay to address. And for digital products — health apps, wellness platforms, engagement programmes — only 3.4% of users remain active by day 30. These aren't content failures. They're design failures. The behaviour architecture that drives engagement, adherence, and retention was never built in.
Clarent's Venture Design practice exists because of this reality. It helps founders, CEOs, and their teams validate, architect, and pressure-test new ventures and digital products — so the investment goes into building the right thing, not correcting the wrong one. Proposition clarity. Audience validation. Behaviour architecture. The work that determines whether a product succeeds.
The cost of skipping validation. The value of getting it right.
of new products fail within their first year. The primary cause is not technology — it is proposition and validation failure. The product was built before the problem was properly understood.
Harvard Business School / MIT, compiled 2024/25
product success rate when founders use structured validation frameworks like Jobs to Be Done — compared to the 95% overall failure rate. The difference is whether the product was designed around what customers actually need.
Strategyn / JTBD research, compiled 2025
of health app users remain active by day 30. Products designed with explicit behaviour change frameworks show 25–40% better retention. The behaviour architecture isn't a feature — it's the infrastructure that determines whether a digital product is used or abandoned.
Compiled from digital health retention studies, 2024/25
of products have meaningful differentiation for consumers — down from 31% in 2003. Only 5% of brands are considered truly unique in their markets. Differentiation is a design decision, not a marketing decision.
Kantar / Bain, compiled 2024/25
Build the right thing before you build it fast.
Clarent's Venture Design advisory works in the space between idea and build — the stage where the decisions that determine whether a product succeeds are actually made. It starts with the proposition: what is this, who is it for, why would they choose it, and does the commercial model work? These aren't abstract questions. They're the ones that 95% of failed products didn't answer before they started building.
For digital products, health platforms, and engagement programmes, the advisory goes deeper into behaviour architecture — the intentional design of the user experience to drive engagement, adherence, and retention. Not gamification or notifications. The structural design that determines whether people use the product once or build it into their lives. Products designed with this discipline show 25–40% better retention than those without it.
Each engagement is led directly by an advisor with genuine experience in product development, proposition design, and behaviour architecture — including specific depth in health tech, consumer products, and hybrid physical-digital ventures. The work produces tangible outputs at every stage: concept briefs, validation plans, behaviour architecture designs, and go-to-market logic. Not recommendations — deliverables.
Ready to explore what structured validation could look like for your product or venture? Start a conversation →
Great products need more than great ideas. They need the business behind them.
A well-designed product still needs the operational infrastructure to deliver it, the market-entry design to scale it, and the leadership capacity to sustain the intensity of bringing it to life. That's why Venture Design sits within Clarent's connected model — alongside Operational Excellence, International Growth, and Human Performance. The most successful product launches aren't just well-conceived. They're well-supported across every dimension that determines whether the concept becomes a business.
I built this practice because I've watched too many talented founders pour months and resources into building something that was never properly validated. The conviction was real. The energy was real. But the proposition hadn't been tested, the audience had been assumed, and the build started before anyone asked the hardest question: is this the right thing? The products that succeed — the ones that people actually use and return to — almost always share the same trait. The founders invested in the discipline before the build. They validated the proposition, designed the engagement architecture, and made the hard choices about differentiation before the first line of code was written. That discipline is what this practice is built around.
Carl Buik, Founder
Frequently asked questions
Who is Venture Design advisory for?
Founders, CEOs, and their teams building new products, digital services, or ventures — at the stage where the concept exists but the proposition, audience, and commercial model haven't been fully validated. Also for teams with an existing digital product that isn't retaining users — where the behaviour architecture needs to be redesigned. The starting point is your specific situation: whether you're pre-build, mid-build, or post-launch and watching engagement decline.
What is behaviour architecture?
Behaviour architecture is the intentional design of a product's user experience to drive engagement, adherence, and sustained use. It's the difference between a product people download and a product people use. For digital health platforms, wellness programmes, and engagement tools, it's the structural design that determines whether users stay past day 30 — where only 3.4% of health app users currently remain active. Products designed with explicit behaviour frameworks show 25–40% better retention.
How is this different from a design agency or product studio?
Clarent operates upstream of design agencies and product studios. The work happens before the build — sharpening the proposition, validating the audience, testing the commercial model, and designing the engagement architecture. A design agency builds what it's given. Clarent helps determine what should be built. The advisory produces tangible deliverables — concept briefs, validation plans, behaviour architecture designs — that a development team or design agency can then execute with confidence.