In cardiometabolic, the patient uses the product, the provider recommends it, and the payer or employer funds it – but their needs differ. We conduct patient, payer, and provider research to reveal who truly decides, what motivates each party, and where the genuine growth opportunity lies, so your bets are based on evidence rather than a founder's instinct.
The Challenge
You're optimizing for the user even though the buyer is someone else entirely
Cardiometabolic products are used by patients but purchased by payers and employers, and recommended by providers – three parties with different priorities. Companies that research only the patient build a beloved product that no one will pay for, because the features members love are not the trend-reduction proof a payer needs or the workflow fit a provider requires. Missing the buyer-versus-user gap is how promising diabetes companies stall at the point of monetization.
Your view of the competition is a logo slide, not true understanding
The cardiometabolic market is crowded and shifting fast, especially after GLP-1s reshaped it, and most companies' competitive analysis is a grid of logos with checkmarks. That tells you nothing about where you actually win, which competitors a payer sees as substitutes, or where the white space is. Making positioning and roadmap decisions off a superficial competitive read means you are differentiating on dimensions buyers do not care about.
You're projecting an entire market from your most vocal customers
Founder intuition and feedback from a handful of engaged members feel like market knowledge, but they are a biased sample – your happiest, most vocal users are not the market. Real growth decisions about which segment to pursue, which condition to expand into, or which channel to build require representative research, and companies that skip it scale a strategy built on the preferences of a few enthusiasts rather than the reality of the buyers they need next.
You don't really know why members leave or fail to activate
The most valuable insight in cardiometabolic – why enrolled members go dark or lapse – usually lives in the members you have already lost, who are the hardest to hear from. Without deliberate research into activation failure and churn drivers, teams theorize about causes and build fixes for the wrong problem. The single most expensive gap in the funnel is often invisible precisely because no one has done the research to explain it.
How We Support You
We begin by mapping the actual decision system – patient, provider, payer, employer – and what each party requires before your product gets selected and funded. Instead of studying only the user, we expose the buyer-versus-user divide that holds back so many cardiometabolic companies, ensuring your growth strategy centers on whoever controls the budget and whoever recommends you, not only the person using the app. Knowing who decides provides the foundation for all the research that follows.
We conduct competitive intelligence that extends beyond the logo grid. We assess how payers and members truly view substitutes, where you authentically win or lose, and where white space exists in a market transformed by GLP-1s. This grounds positioning and roadmap choices in how the market understands the category, rather than in a feature checklist buyers never consider.
We trade loudest-customer extrapolation for representative research. Using segmentation, patient research, and the appropriate blend of qualitative and quantitative methods, we develop an accurate view of the segments you might target next and what would motivate them – so expansion into a new condition or channel is supported by evidence about the intended buyer, not simply the excitement of existing fans.
We undertake the churn and activation research most teams sidestep, intentionally contacting members who lapsed or never activated to understand why. The most valuable insight often sits there, and changing the costliest gap in your funnel from a hypothesis into a known, addressable cause is frequently the engagement's single highest-value result.
What sets us apart is that we are operators who translate research into decisions, rather than a research vendor that delivers a report. Each insight is positioned against an actual growth choice in front of you, and we tie the findings directly to your growth strategy, product, and go-to-market work so the research shapes what you create and how you sell, instead of remaining in a deck.
What we deliver
- Decision-system map across patient, provider, payer, and employer
- Competitive intelligence beyond the logo grid – substitutes, win/loss, and white space
- Representative segmentation and patient research for next-segment decisions
- Churn and activation-failure research reaching lost and inactive members
- Insights framed against real growth decisions and connected to strategy and product
In cardiometabolic, the person who values your product and the person who funds it are generally not the same. Research focused only on the user overlooks the buyer who ultimately determines whether you have a viable business.
Our Methodology
We conduct a targeted research engagement, generally scoped around the decisions in front of you. The first phase identifies the questions that count – which segment, which channel, why members churn – and creates the right patient, payer, and provider research to resolve them. The second phase fields that research, pairing qualitative depth with representative quantitative validation. The final phase converts findings into decisions, positioning every insight against a genuine growth choice and linking it to your strategy, product, and go-to-market work.
Unlike a traditional market-research firm, we begin with your decisions rather than a standard study template, and we provide actionable conclusions instead of a neutral report you must decipher. A research vendor gives you data; we give you a data-backed recommendation connected to a particular bet. As operators, we understand which insights genuinely reshape a cardiometabolic growth strategy and which amount to interesting trivia.
The engagement is designed to provide lasting understanding, not a single-use deck. The decision-system map, segmentation, and research methodology become resources your team applies to its next decision. We prefer helping you understand your market clearly over selling you recurring studies.
Our Approach
In the first phase, we identify the real decisions at hand and design research to address them, because research disconnected from a decision is costly trivia. Within the opening weeks, you will have a clear research plan aligned with the specific growth choices before you – which segment, which channel, why churn occurs.
You receive a research-capable operator from us, along with qualitative and quantitative research support. From your side, we need leadership alignment on the decisions that matter, plus access to members, former members, and, where feasible, payer and provider contacts. Connecting with lapsed members and buyers beyond the patient is challenging, but that is where the most valuable insight resides.
The cadence begins with a working session to develop the research plan, followed by fielding and then a synthesis phase that turns findings into recommendations. Your team participates throughout, ensuring the insights are absorbed rather than delivered cold and that the conclusions hold up against the decisions they are meant to guide.
Engagements are tailored to the research requirement and usually last two to four months. At the end, you have a decision-system map, competitive and segmentation insights, an understanding of churn, and concrete recommendations linked to your growth bets. Many clients come back for their next decision or expand the engagement into strategy execution.
- Buyer-and-user decision clarity
- Evidence-based segment and channel decisions
- Understood churn and activation drivers
- Positioning grounded in real market perception
If your diabetes & cardiometabolic health company needs market research & insights leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
What does a market research engagement cost for a cardiometabolic company?
The engagement has a fixed fee based on the research requirement, typically billed across two to four months, and costs less than a study from a large research firm and much less than making the wrong segment or channel bet without evidence. The key cost variable is the research depth and blend – representative quantitative research is more expensive than a qualitative round.
How soon will we see results from a market research engagement?
Initial qualitative insights frequently emerge during the first few weeks of fielding, while the complete picture and recommendations arrive within the two-to-four-month engagement. Value appears when the findings alter a decision – a segment you target, a churn driver you address, a repositioning you pursue – meaning the payoff connects to the growth bet informed by the research, rather than to a set date.
How does the research team work with our current leadership and product staff?
We begin by aligning your leadership around the decisions that matter, then engage your product and go-to-market teams throughout so insights are absorbed instead of delivered cold. To conduct the research that matters, we require access to your members, former members, and, ideally, payer and provider contacts.
How is Winston Francois different from a conventional market research firm?
A conventional research firm follows a study template and gives you a neutral report to decipher. We begin with the particular growth decisions before you, develop research to address them, and provide recommendations linked to genuine bets – because, as operators, we understand which insights truly reshape a cardiometabolic strategy.
How is ROI measured for a market research engagement?
ROI comes from better decisions – choosing a segment or channel based on evidence rather than instinct, resolving a churn cause instead of theorizing about it, or repositioning according to genuine market perception. Since research either influences a decision or does not, we connect every insight to a particular choice, making its value tangible.
How do you study payers and providers in addition to patients?
We intentionally build the research to include parties other than the patient – payers, employers, and providers who determine whether you are selected and funded. This requires greater effort than running a patient survey, so we apply the appropriate qualitative methods and draw on both your contacts and ours to reach these buyers.
Which type of cardiometabolic company is best suited to this service?
The strongest fit is a Series A through growth-stage diabetes or cardiometabolic company confronting a genuine growth decision – which segment to target, why members churn, how to reposition after GLP-1s – and prepared to follow the evidence. If there is no specific decision in front of you, the research is premature, and we will tell you so.
