Finding the Fit — book cover

Finding the Fit

How to identify and close the product gap faster.

Natasha Gorobinskaya

Out September 2026

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It is well worth the time and the effort spent to navigate through this book when starting a company or investing your time and effort in a new idea. OPTICS will help founders challenge their own assumptions and take a more systematic approach before overbuilding.

Nancy Kunz · VP of Innovation and Retail Analytics, Meredith Corporation

Failure isn't a law of nature

Ninety per cent of startups fail. The industry treats this like gravity, a law of nature founders have to accept. This book argues it's not inevitable.

Drawing on founder interviews and field studies, Natasha Gorobinskaya traces most failures to identifiable gaps in customer understanding and validation, then offers a way to close them. Her OPTICS method gives founders a clear, easy-to-follow structure, drawing on Michael Margolis's Bull's Eye Customer Sprint and her proprietary Experience-Value Framework, and lands on a traceable product-market fit evaluation. AI-assisted when you choose, for early-stage and mature ventures alike.

What you'll take away

Inside the book

  1. One

    Challenging the law of startup nature

    Why most startups fail, where founders miss their customer, and why Customer Development so often goes unapplied.

  2. Two

    The OPTICS Method

    Observation, Problem, Targets, Insight, Calibration, Strategy — the six moves from first signal to validated strategy.

  3. Three

    Putting it to work

    Evaluating outcomes, running a five-day OPTICS Sprint, and how OPTICS sits alongside other frameworks.

Who should read it

Written for the accelerators, studios, and incubators building the next wave of companies, and for the founders inside them who suspect the standard startup playbook is incomplete. Coaches, mentors, and investors who want a faster, evidence-based way to evaluate ventures will find it just as useful.

Natasha Gorobinskaya

Natasha is an expert in product research and human behaviour who has led product work across continents at Google, Miro, TheFork, and Time Inc. She has spent 25 years exploring decision-making across academia, corporate research, and three startups of her own.

She is the founder of Blueberry Research Group, a product research venture that helps startups validate ideas and find strategic fit, with a focus on impact-driven ventures. She holds degrees in marketing, finance, cultural mediation, and human-computer interaction from NYU, the University of Alcalá de Henares, and Pompeu Fabra. Originally from Ukraine, she has lived in New York and Dublin and is based in Madrid.

Finding the Fit, front and back covers

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