Early.Partners launches customer research sprint for D2C brands

Early.Partners has launched KYC (Know Your Customer), a three-week customer research sprint for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands to better understand customer behaviour and motivations. The sprint is designed for brands that have grown beyond relying primarily on founder intuition but may not have a dedicated consumer insights function. It involves recruiting and speaking with customers, analysing their behaviour and motivations, and translating the findings into actions across brand positioning, communication, product and growth. The research will examine what brings customers to a category, why they select a particular brand, what drives repeat purchases and what they value. The aim is to go beyond demographic profiles and customer personas by connecting customer motivations with business decisions. Commenting on the launch, Meghana Bhat , Co-founder, Early.Partners, said, “If you go looking for what’s not working, you’ll find no shortage of opinions. And it’s impossible to act on all of them. Instead, talk to customers who are already choosing you. Understand what they value, why they choose you and what makes them come back. Then double down on what’s working. That’s what Early’s KYC’s objective is: finding the signals that matter and turning them into growth.” Bhat added, “There’s a point in a company’s journey where the founder can no longer be the proxy for the customer. That doesn’t mean intuition stops being valuable. It means you need to complement it with evidence from the people actually buying and using your product.” The first cohort of the KYC sprint is scheduled to close on September 25, 2026.