It started where every project does, with a Mission Plan. The point is to get assumptions out of everyone's heads and onto the table: define success in measurable terms, build the messaging architecture, refine personas, run the competitive analysis, and more. The goal is to become a genuine expert in the product before proposing a single solution. I ran a heuristic audit across 170-plus screens, documenting friction and points of doubt across the business owner, retail investor, and institutional investor paths. I grounded it in real behavior with an analytics review and a full-lifecycle service blueprint that traced a loan from both sides. Then I interviewed people inside the company and out. Internal stakeholders across operations, climate, marketing, product, sales, and customer service, plus first-time retail investors, institutional investors managing six figures across multiple loans, and business owners who had run a raise. The findings created patterns that surfaced independently across every source, which is how I separated signal from noise. It all rolled up into one living document the whole team shared—a single, evidence-backed source of truth to prioritize against.