How we build
The making is part of the product.
Our cadence
We don't run formal scheduled customer interviews. We've found that a forced interview cadence at our scale becomes research-theater quickly. What we do instead is capture customer signal whenever it arrives — from email, support threads, observation, instrumentation — and treat the discipline as “don't lose signal” rather than “manufacture signal on a calendar.”
Capture customer signal as it arrives
Email replies, support threads, observed usage, occasional retrospective conversations — anything documented from a real user gets logged in our customer-conversations folder. No required minimum cadence; the discipline is to capture, not to manufacture.
The 5-gate process
Every feature passes through: cite the customer signals that motivated it (or honestly mark it designer-led), write a measurable claim, get a prototype reaction when feasible, ship to a small cohort first, then it's marketing-eligible. The discipline is honesty about evidence, not artificial gatekeeping.
One marketing-copy audit
One page or section of our marketing site, graded against the five authenticity tests. If it fails, we rewrite it or retire it.
Persona refresh + self-audit
Personas updated from accumulated signal in the prior quarter. Plus a public self-audit of the product against the HCD framework — including what we got wrong. Published openly.
Customer council
When there's a critical mass of engaged customers, 3-5 of them meet with us for 60 minutes. They tell us what's working, what isn't, what we're missing. $100 in credit + decision-influence. Not focus-group fodder; co-designers. We haven't held one yet — that's honest.
The artifacts we publish
We try to publish the work, not just the product. If a customer wants to know how we make decisions, they can read the same documents we work from.
Studio practice
coach-house-hcdBothy is built by Coach House. The studio-level practice — the version every Coach House product (Bothy, Pete QPR Finder, East Broadway Business, Resolve Startup App) is built against — lives in its own open repo. Five principles, eight anti-patterns, a per-feature five-gate process, seven reusable design + code patterns, and the quarterly portfolio audits across all Coach House products.
The Q2 2026 portfolio audit (covering Bothy + three other Coach House products) is in that repo at audits/2026-Q2-portfolio.md. The Bothy-specific Q2 audit, including the four marketing failures named below + the corrections shipped within 24 hours, is at audits/2026-Q2-bothy.md.
The artifacts below are the Bothy-specific layer that sits inside the studio practice — the working documents for this product.
- HCD-FRAMEWORK.md
The Bothy-specific working reference: 5 principles, 8 anti-patterns, cadence, 5 marketing authenticity tests. The studio-level version of this lives at coach-house-hcd above.
- HCD-SELF-AUDIT.md
The May 2026 audit that found the failures we corrected (see “What we've gotten wrong” below). The reformatted version, including the resolved-since-audit log, lives at coach-house-hcd/audits/2026-Q2-bothy.md.
- customer-conversations/
The interview protocol and the per-session note template — public so the practice can be inspected, copied, or critiqued. The persona documents themselves describe specific real people and are kept in the private product repo to respect them. Every product decision traces back through this folder.
- Pull request template
Every code change goes through this checklist. The HCD per-feature gate is enforced at merge time, not at marketing-launch time.
- Research desk
Three white papers on the market, on nonprofit burnout, and on HCD itself — published with full sources, reusable, citable.
What we've gotten wrong
We don't hide our corrections — we publish them. This list grows over time. Every entry is a thing we either claimed before we should have, built before we validated, or framed in a way that didn't respect our users. Dates show when we caught and corrected it.
- May 2026
Unverifiable "~4 hours/week reclaimed" claim
What was wrong: Our Solution copy said the average team reclaims ~4 hours/week per fundraiser. The number was extrapolated from a generic Lokalise SaaS study, not measured on actual customers.
The fix: Removed the claim. Replaced with "We're early in measuring time-saved with real customers — we'll publish what we find." Restores Test 5 (verifiable-claim) compliance.
- May 2026
Strikethrough-tools vignette (dignity failure)
What was wrong: Our Solution section had a list of tools the user already uses ("Grant tracker spreadsheet, Sticky notes, Drive folder...") with strikethrough styling. Read as "what you've been doing is wrong."
The fix: Removed the strikethrough. Reframed as "You've built this out of necessity. It works, but it costs you time and attention every week." Restores Test 4 (dignity) compliance.
- May 2026
AI-drafted reports advertised before built
What was wrong: The Premium tier on our pricing page listed AI-drafted reports + monthly opportunity refresh as if they were shipped. Neither was.
The fix: Added "Coming Q3 2026" labels. We commit to shipping by end of Q3 or honestly extending the date.
- May 2026
Hero demo card showed the buyer view, not the worker view
What was wrong: Our landing page demo card opened with three metric tiles ("Active grants 12 / Funded $184K / Tasks due 4"). That's an ED dashboard, not a grants-manager dashboard. The Hero text claimed worker-first; the visual contradicted it.
The fix: Rebuilt the card to lead with the next thing to do, then the upcoming week, then funder context. Aggregates removed from the lead. Same principle applied to the in-product dashboard.
- May 2026
Brand rename: "Coach House Grants" → "Bothy"
What was wrong: We launched as Coach House Grants. Two problems: the "Grants" in the name locked us into a grants-only positioning when the actual product is fund development (grants + donor stewardship + funder relationships). And we did not check trademark space first — "Coach House Grants" was generic enough to never be defensible if a similar player emerged.
The fix: Renamed to "Bothy" (a bothy is a basic working shelter — the metaphor matches our worker-first positioning + sustains the architectural family with the Coach House parent studio). Cleared trademark space first this time. Updated all product surface, operating docs, and SETUP. White papers keep their original publication-date bylines as historical record.
Hold us to this
If you see us drift — claim a feature we haven't shipped, advertise a benefit we haven't measured, or design for the buyer at the worker's expense — tell us. We'd rather get the email from a customer than learn it from a thread on LinkedIn three months later.
Send corrections to hello@bothy.so. They get tracked. They get acted on. They get published if material.
Next quarterly audit
August 2026. We'll publish the grade — including failures — within 7 days of the audit. If we slip the date, that's a correction on this page too.