B2B SaaS · Fintech

De-risking a fintech launch with finance buyers, before building

Concept test, jobs-to-be-done interviews and a live signup UX test — a full read on an SMB expense platform in under a day.

A fintech team used VibeIQ to pressure-test PulsePay, a modern expense platform, with a synthetic panel of eight SMB finance buyers — from founders to CFOs — combining a concept and pricing test, jobs-to-be-done interviews, and a live UX review of the signup flow to find the hottest segment, the right price and the real switching barriers before writing more code.

study formats

finance buyers

quant responses

< 1 day

to insight

The challenge

Building a fintech platform is costly, and finance buyers are notoriously hard to reach and slow to switch. The team needed to know which segment felt the most pain, what plan and price the market expected, and where the onboarding lost people, without spending weeks recruiting finance leaders.

Our approach

We ran three complementary studies against the same eight-persona synthetic panel, spanning company sizes, roles and current tools. A concept and pricing questionnaire measured appeal, value clarity, likelihood to switch and willingness to pay. Jobs-to-be-done interviews explored how teams manage spend today and what triggers a switch. Finally, a UX research session had personas react to the live signup flow to surface first-run friction.

The results

Teams still on spreadsheets showed by far the highest appeal, while willingness to pay a per-seat premium scaled cleanly with company size. The interviews reframed the pitch around faster month-end close rather than cards, and revealed that migration effort and internal sign-off, not the concept, are the real blockers. The UX review showed the signup risked losing self-serve buyers by asking for commitment before showing value. The output was a prioritised plan: target spreadsheet teams, tier by size, and let users reach a sample dashboard before any setup.