Software for the unglamorous work that keeps small companies running.

Dear reader,

I’m Pranav. pingsail is a product house with one builder and three products, all aimed at the same class of problem: operational work that small enterprises repeat every week, overpay for, or have accepted as friction. I build, I watch which products customers keep using, and I put my time behind the ones that earn it.

The thesis

Most markets I enter are already crowded. Search any category on a tool directory and you’ll find hundreds of products, from weekend projects to enterprise suites. Crowding is rarely the real issue. Most of these products are built to outperform their competitors, so each generation refines the assumptions of the one before it. Meanwhile the customer has moved: team sizes, workflows, budgets, the rest of their stack.

A problem solved well in 2015 is often solved for a customer who no longer exists.

So I don’t set out to build a better version of the incumbent. I start by asking whether the incumbent’s goal still matches the user’s.

Method

Every pingsail product began as a problem I lived with while running a service agency. That is the starting point. The process below tests whether the problem is shared, and by whom.

1. 1.ConversationsOngoing

   I speak with people across geographies, company sizes and seniority. The root problem is usually common; how it surfaces depends on scale, business type and location.

2. 2.SegmentationFive classes

   I sort those conversations into five classes, each defined by the kind of person and how many of them I spoke to. Headcount alone doesn’t decide it. A smaller class that controls the buying decision can outweigh a larger one that doesn’t.

3. 3.Market mappingOne week

   If a market exists, or can be created, I spend a week on research, much of it run by AI agents, cataloguing every product I can find in the category.

4. 4.ImmersionTwo weeks

   Two weeks using the leading products as a customer would, alongside whatever data shows how each one evolved.

5. 5.DocumentationOne week

   A week writing down what I learned, before any design begins.

6. 6.BuildStandard cycle

   A standard product cycle, plus a few methods I keep proprietary.

Correspondence

If a recurring task in your business costs more time than it should, I’d like to hear about it. Specifics help:

• who does it,
• how often,
• and what you’ve already tried.

That is the raw material the next product is built from.

Reply to this letter or write to pk@pranavkumar.co