6 stages. 18 steps. ~50 hours. Every stage has defined inputs, outputs, roles, and quality gates. Here is exactly what happens at each stage and what the client receives.
Qualification is the most important stage because it determines where the pipeline invests its resources. The client provides 5-7 target accounts and an optional focus area. The qualification team evaluates each account against three criteria: evidence of active product development (hiring signals, patent activity, conference participation), identifiable decision-makers (VP Engineering, CTO, or Head of Product with public professional profiles), and technology fit (the company builds products in domains where Promwad's 100+ engineers have demonstrated expertise).
Accounts that fail qualification are replaced from a backup list or the pipeline team suggests alternatives based on OSINT scanning of adjacent companies. Typically 1-2 of the initial 5-7 accounts are replaced at this stage. This early filtering is deliberate: spending 2 hours on qualification to avoid wasting 20+ hours on concept creation for an account that will never convert is the highest-ROI activity in the pipeline.
The output of Stage 1 is a qualified account list with preliminary profiles: company overview, identified decision-makers, initial signal assessment, and a Go/No-Go recommendation for each account. This document is shared with the client for alignment before proceeding to research.
The Insights stage is where OSINT research produces actionable intelligence. For each qualified account, the business analyst creates a detailed company profile covering industry position, financial health, product portfolio, technology stack, organizational structure, and competitive landscape. The profiling uses public sources: annual reports, patent databases, job postings, conference proceedings, press releases, and trade publications.
From each company profile, the analyst generates 5-7 potential product opportunities (insights). Each insight is a specific hypothesis: "This company is struggling with X challenge, and a product that does Y would address their need, using Z technology from the vendor's portfolio." Insights are scored on four dimensions: business impact for the target company, technical feasibility with available engineering capabilities, competitive advantage versus existing solutions, and time-to-market urgency based on market signals.
A senior technical expert reviews the top-scoring insights for engineering plausibility. The review catches insights that are commercially interesting but technically impractical (e.g., requiring custom silicon that would cost $2M in NRE). Only the top 2 insights per account survive to concept creation. The rest are documented but parked for potential future use.
Concept creation is the core of the pipeline and the most resource-intensive stage, consuming approximately 20 hours per concept. For each approved insight, the product manager creates a deep analysis document: problem statement with market context, solution hypothesis with technical approach, competitive analysis with differentiation matrix, business model with pricing assumptions, and implementation roadmap with phased milestones.
The deep analysis feeds into the product concept itself: a 6-10 page document combining an executive summary, system architecture (block diagram with interfaces and protocols), preliminary BOM (critical components with unit costs and volume assumptions), competitive positioning (3-5 alternatives with specific differentiation), and go-to-market angle (target stakeholder, lead pain point, pilot scope). The concept must tell a story that a CTO can follow in 30 minutes.
Each concept passes through three validation gates before delivery. Product validation checks business logic: does the market opportunity justify the development investment? Technical validation checks engineering feasibility: can this architecture be built with known components at the estimated cost? Business validation checks sales viability: will this concept resonate in a meeting and lead to a follow-up conversation?
The Mini-Offer stage packages the validated concepts into client-ready materials. The primary deliverable is a 6-7 slide presentation that combines the strongest concepts into a single narrative arc. The presentation follows a standardized structure: company context (showing the research depth), market opportunity (why now), solution vision (what the product does), technical approach (architecture highlights), competitive advantage (why this approach wins), and proposed next steps (pilot scope, timeline, budget).
Alongside the presentation, the team produces meeting notes: a narrative script for the sales manager or FAE who will present the concepts. The meeting notes include a client profile summary, talking points for each concept, anticipated technical questions with suggested answers, likely objections with counter-arguments, and a proposed agenda for the meeting including time allocation per topic.
All materials are white-labeled. Company logos, color schemes, and formatting templates are applied according to the client's brand guidelines. Documents are delivered in editable formats (Markdown source files, exportable to PowerPoint and PDF) so the presenting team can customize language and emphasis before the meeting.
The Client Meeting stage is where the pipeline's output meets the real world. The FAE or sales manager presents the mini-offer to the target company's decision-makers. The meeting typically runs 30-45 minutes: 5 minutes of context setting, 15-20 minutes presenting 2-3 concepts, and 10-15 minutes of discussion and Q&A.
The presenting team is prepared with depth that goes well beyond the slides. The stakeholder profiles inform the communication approach: which concepts to lead with based on the decision-maker's known priorities, which technical details to emphasize based on their background, and which competitive comparisons will resonate most. This preparation is what produces the 75% positive response rate; the concepts are tailored not just to the company but to the specific people in the room.
A positive response at this stage means the client expresses interest in continuing the conversation: requesting a follow-up meeting, asking for a detailed proposal, identifying additional internal stakeholders to involve, or directly discussing pilot scope and timeline. The 75% rate means that three out of four meetings result in continued engagement rather than a polite decline.
The Follow-up stage converts meeting interest into project engagement. Within 24 hours of the meeting, the business manager produces a structured feedback document: what concepts resonated, which questions were asked, what objections were raised, what next steps were agreed, and what timeline the client indicated. This feedback document serves two purposes: it guides the follow-up actions, and it feeds back into the pipeline for continuous improvement.
Follow-up actions are tailored to the meeting outcome. For strong positive responses (immediate interest in a specific concept), the follow-up includes a detailed proposal with engineering scope, timeline, team composition, and pricing. For moderate positive responses (general interest but no specific commitment), the follow-up includes additional technical detail on the most interesting concept and a proposed workshop to explore the opportunity further.
The transition from Model T pipeline to engineering engagement is seamless because the same organization (Promwad, with 100+ engineers and 500+ completed projects across 20 years) handles both. The product concept becomes the project brief. The system architecture becomes the starting point for detailed design. The stakeholder relationships established during the meeting carry forward into the project. There is no handoff between a sales partner and a delivery partner because they are the same team.
The pipeline runs approximately 2-3 weeks from kickoff to delivered concepts (Stages 1-4). The Client Meeting (Stage 5) is scheduled by the client's sales team, typically within 1-2 weeks of delivery. Follow-up (Stage 6) begins within 24 hours of the meeting. Total elapsed time from kickoff to follow-up is typically 4-6 weeks.
A typical engagement involves 4-5 people: a product manager (pipeline orchestration and concept creation), a business analyst (OSINT research and company profiling), 1-2 senior engineers (technical validation and architecture review), and a business manager (client coordination and meeting preparation). AI agents handle volume research tasks under human supervision.
Yes. The pipeline is designed for parallelization. Qualification runs simultaneously across all 5-7 accounts. Research and profiling run in parallel for all qualified accounts. Concept creation is the bottleneck because each concept requires focused engineering attention, but 2-3 concepts can be developed simultaneously by different team members.
Stage 1→2: account must have confirmed active development and identifiable decision-makers. Stage 2→3: insights must be scored above threshold on all four dimensions and validated by a technical expert. Stage 3→4: concepts must pass product, technical, and business validation. Stage 4→5: materials must be reviewed by the client's team for brand alignment. Stage 5→6: meeting must produce documented next steps.