Most product advice starts too late. It assumes you’re already building — running sprints, prioritizing features, shipping MVPs. But in risk-averse, high-trust industries, the real unlock happens earlier: finding business-market fit.

In this talk, I’ll share how we built a fast-growing product in the legal services space — not by launching quickly, but by moving fast without product. We scaled operations manually with people, scrappy tools, and zero code, all while deeply learning what clients truly valued, and what professionals (Attorneys) needed to get motivated, adopt new ways of working, and see how their time and expertise could be repurposed—not replaced—through a different model of delivering their service.

We nearly invested in multiple “innovative” product ideas that felt right — ideas grounded in strong product instincts from well-known tech companies. But those instincts didn’t map to a legacy industry with deeply ingrained habits and emotional drivers. Only through operational experimentation, business model validation, and trust-building did we earn the clarity and momentum to build something scalable.

 This talk is about:

· How to move fast without product to validate your business and market

· Why product sense alone can mislead you in legacy or high-friction industries

· What to get right in the business-market phase so you're prepared for product-led growth

· How to manage the tricky transition from ops-led success to a scalable, product-first org -> without breaking what worked or losing your team

 Whether you’re building in a traditional market or struggling to scale past early traction, you’ll leave with a new lens for sequencing product strategy, and a practical framework for unlocking growth in the toughest environments.