Company Context
You’re the PM for FundForge, a Series B B2B SaaS company that sells workflow tools to universities and research hospitals. FundForge has 1,200 institutional customers across the US, UK, and EU, with ~480k monthly active users (faculty PIs, postdocs, lab managers, and university research administrators). Revenue is subscription-based: institutions pay $120k–$600k/year depending on seat count and modules.
FundForge’s core product today is a research operations suite (IRB/IACUC tracking, lab inventory, and publication reporting). Leadership wants to expand into the adjacent “pre-award” space (finding grants, writing proposals, and submitting applications) because it’s a larger budget line item and more strategic to the university.
Competitors include:
- InfoEd and Cayuse (enterprise, compliance-heavy, deeply embedded but clunky UX)
- Instrumentl (strong grant discovery for smaller orgs)
- OpenAI/Google Docs add-ons used informally for drafting (not integrated into institutional workflows)
User / Market Scenario
The market is under pressure:
- Funding rates are falling in many programs (e.g., NIH R01 success rates hovering around ~18–22% depending on institute), and universities are pushing researchers to submit more proposals.
- Researchers report spending 10–25% of their time on grant-related work.
- Administrators are overwhelmed by compliance, budget justifications, and submission portals.
FundForge ran 26 interviews and surveyed 1,800 users. Key personas:
| Persona | Share of MAUs | Primary Goal | Current Workflow | Top Pain Points |
|---|
| Principal Investigator (PI) | 22% | Win grants to fund lab | Word/Google Docs + email + admin support | “I don’t know which grants are worth my time”; “I rewrite the same sections repeatedly” |
| Postdoc / Research Scientist | 31% | Draft proposals, build CV | Docs + reference managers | “Hard to align narrative to sponsor priorities”; “Version control is chaos” |
| Lab Manager / Coordinator | 17% | Assemble attachments, biosketches | Shared drives + templates | “Chasing people for documents”; “Formatting and compliance errors” |
| Research Administrator (Pre-Award) | 30% | Submit error-free applications | Sponsor portals + internal checklists | “Last-minute changes break budgets”; “We catch issues too late” |
Problem / Opportunity
FundForge’s CEO set a 12-month goal: launch a Grant Success module that becomes a top-3 reason institutions renew.
However, early pilots show mixed results:
- In a 6-week beta with 8 universities, users loved grant discovery, but only 14% completed a full proposal workflow in FundForge.
- The biggest drop-off happens after “grant found” → “draft created”: users revert to Docs/email.
- Admin teams report that ~9% of submissions are delayed due to preventable errors (missing attachments, outdated biosketch format, budget mismatch).
You have a team of 8 engineers, 1 designer, 1 data analyst, and access to an internal LLM platform approved for non-sensitive text (but not for uploading identifiable patient data or unpublished human-subject protocols).
Your Task (Deliverables)
As the PM, propose a product approach that addresses the question behind this interview prompt: how would you design for users’ real experience with grant writing and securing research funding?
- Clarify the primary user need and “job to be done” across personas (PI vs postdoc vs admin). What is the core outcome you’re optimizing for?
- Define a product vision for FundForge’s Grant Success module (what it is and is not) and how it differentiates vs Cayuse/InfoEd and point tools.
- Propose an MVP that meaningfully improves funding outcomes or efficiency. Include 3–6 key features and the user journey.
- Prioritize your roadmap for the next 2 quarters. Use a prioritization method (e.g., RICE or Kano) and explicitly call out trade-offs.
- Define success metrics and an experiment/validation plan (what you’d measure in 30/90/180 days, and how you’d know it’s working).
Constraints
- Timeline: MVP must ship to 20 pilot institutions in 12 weeks.
- Compliance: Must support audit trails and institutional approval flows; cannot store certain sensitive research content in the LLM system.
- Integrations: Many institutions require integration with ORCID, NIH biosketch, and at least one submission system (e.g., Grants.gov / ASSIST). You can only build one deep integration for MVP.
- Change management: Researchers resist switching away from Docs; admins want standardization.
- Business: The module must justify a +$80k/year upsell for mid-sized institutions within 12 months.
Your answer should be structured and explicit about assumptions, user trade-offs, and how you’d learn quickly.
