The Business Question
Is the product wrong, or is the execution wrong?
By mid-2022, Autograph was in a difficult position. The platform had launched with real momentum — Tom Brady's name, a DraftKings partnership, and genuine cultural relevance. But the signals coming back were bad: sentiment on Discord and Twitter was low and getting worse, web analytics showed users weren't returning, and most of the existing base had come through DraftKings rather than organic fan interest.
Leadership had a decision to make: double down on the current product, fix specific features, or reconsider the direction entirely. That decision needed evidence. My role was to generate that evidence — and to represent it honestly, regardless of what it showed.
The core business question wasn't "how do we improve the NFT product." It was: who are our users, what do they actually want, and is there a product here that serves them?
The Stakes
A product pivot of this magnitude — from digital collectibles to a fan experience platform — required research that was credible enough to justify the change in direction. A 27-person qualitative study alone wouldn't have been enough. The program was designed specifically to produce findings that leadership could act on with confidence.
Research Approach
Three phases, designed to escalate confidence
A qualitative study alone wouldn't be sufficient to justify a company pivot. The program was designed sequentially: start with discovery to understand who users actually were, move to focus groups to explore what they wanted, and close with a large-scale quantitative survey to validate the direction at a scale leadership couldn't dismiss. Each phase was designed to be credible on its own — and together they were designed to be undeniable.
Who the Users Were
The interviews revealed two different products were needed
The interview synthesis produced a clean, unexpected split. Autograph's users weren't one audience — they were two, with fundamentally different motivations, behaviors, and definitions of value. The product had been built for one of them. The other was completely underserved.
This persona framework wasn't just a research deliverable. It became the strategic lens for every decision that followed — who to build for, what to partner on, and how to position the new direction to investors and the press.
User Personas — Developed from 11 Moderated Interviews
What Focus Groups Revealed
Fans wanted to be there — not to own a picture of it
The focus groups kept returning to the same theme, session after session: what users actually wanted had nothing to do with digital files. They wanted signed jerseys. They wanted to be in the same room as Tom Brady. They wanted a photo with him, a voicemail from him, a seat at his charity event. The NFT was only interesting if it could get them closer to that.
The analogy that crystallized the finding: Autograph had been selling the ticket stub. Fans wanted the concert. A stub proves you were there — but only if you were. An NFT as a collectible artifact has the same problem. An NFT as an access mechanism — the thing that gets you through the door to a real experience — is a completely different product.
This reframe was the key insight from Phase 2. And it was the framing I used when presenting the pivot recommendation to leadership: the technology isn't wrong. The application of it is.
Core Finding
Fans wanted physical goods and in-person access to their favorite athletes. The NFT collectible was only valuable as an access mechanism — not as the end product. Autograph had been optimizing the wrong half of the equation, and the data proved it.
What the Survey Confirmed
The data validated the qualitative signal at scale
The 3,000-person survey confirmed and quantified the focus group findings — and surfaced one additional, strategically important insight about the Tom Brady fan base specifically.
The MaxDiff analysis on desired features confirmed the physical-first hierarchy clearly: physical goods and special access opportunities consistently outranked digital-only benefits across both general football fans and TB fan segments.
Survey Snapshot — n=3,000 Football Fans
Relative ranking illustration based on MaxDiff results. n=3,000.
The Pivot
Before and after — what research changed
The Product Pivot — Before & After
Delivering the Finding
How do you tell a company the product needs to change?
The hardest part of this project wasn't the research. It was the presentation. Telling leadership that the product they'd built, funded, and launched was misaligned with what users wanted is a high-stakes conversation — one that can go wrong if the evidence isn't airtight or the framing isn't right.
The three-phase design was deliberate preparation for that moment. The interviews gave us direction. The focus groups gave us specificity. The n=3,000 survey gave us the number that made it undeniable: the NFT collectible ranked fifth out of six features fans actually wanted. That wasn't a qualitative hunch. It was a forced-choice ranking from 3,000 people.
The recommendation wasn't "stop what you're doing." It was: the technology is right. The application is wrong. NFTs as access mechanisms to physical experiences — that's the product. Not NFTs as the experience themselves. That reframe made the pivot feel like a direction, not a failure.
Strategic Recommendations
Create a product centered on getting fans closer to physical experiences with their favorite icons
Direction 1
Redesign the product around physical goods and in-person access as the primary value — not digital collectibles
Direction 2
Use NFTs as access tokens, not end products — the concert ticket, not the stub
Direction 3
Pursue partnerships that supply physical goods and event access — translate fan preferences into a new business development strategy
Key Insight
Tom Brady fans are more fanatical consumers across all categories — making them a high-value anchor audience for a premium membership product beyond sports alone
Impact
Zero-to-one research that changed the roadmap
Product Pivot
Research directly drove Autograph's strategic transition from a digital collectibles platform to a fan experience and membership product — a fundamental change in company direction
Audience Clarity
Two-persona framework (Financially Motivated vs. Hobby Motivated) gave the product team a clear picture of who to build for — and which persona had been underserved
Feature Prioritization
MaxDiff analysis quantified what fans valued most — providing a data-backed hierarchy that directly shaped what went into the new product roadmap
Community Signals
Discord and web analytics analysis established a behavioral baseline — giving the team quantitative evidence that the current product was underperforming before research began
Partnership Strategy
Research findings informed outreach to partners who could supply physical goods and experiences — translating fan preferences directly into a new business development strategy
Scale of Validation
The n=3,000 survey ensured the qualitative pivot recommendation wasn't based on 27 voices alone — giving leadership the confidence to commit to a major product change