For the first version of YourBrief.io, our landing page said "structured decision intelligence delivered in 24 hours." It sounded professional. It matched the consulting-industry norm. It made the $49 price feel reasonable.
It was also a lie.
Not a malicious lie — we genuinely believed we'd deliver in under a day. The original concept was a human researcher (or a slower AI pipeline) reviewing your input and writing a custom brief. 24 hours was optimistic. 48 hours was realistic. 72 hours was honest.
Then we built the actual product.
## What changed
We built a template-based brief generator. Not a chatbot. Not an LLM with a clever prompt. A deterministic engine that takes six inputs (topic, decision, context, audience, timeline, email) and produces seven structured sections:
1. The decision (framed as one-way door or two-way door) 2. Key questions to answer before deciding 3. Recommended frameworks (selected by keyword pattern) 4. Decision criteria 5. Sources to consult 6. Next steps 7. When to escalate
The whole thing generates in under five seconds.
When we shipped it and ran it ourselves, the brief was... actually good. Not perfect. Not a substitute for a $30k McKinsey engagement. But a solid framework that frames the decision sharply and points you at the right next move.
And we realized: saying "24 hours" was underselling.
## The honest pitch
A decision brief is most valuable in the moment you're stuck. If you're staring at "should we build feature X?" at 2pm on a Tuesday, the brief that arrives Wednesday morning doesn't help — you spent the rest of Tuesday paralyzed, second-guessing yourself, probably calling a friend to talk it through.
A brief that arrives in five seconds changes the loop. You see the framework. You either act on it (yes, build it) or realize the framework is wrong for this case (and you know what question to ask instead).
The instant turnaround isn't a feature. It's the whole product.
## What this means for pricing
At $49 per brief, the unit economics work at any speed — there's no human time. At 24 hours, you'd be tempted to charge $99 (consulting discount). At 5 seconds, $49 is generous. But we kept the price because:
- The volume model is "one brief per decision," not "one subscription for everything" - We don't want to be a "cheap AI tool" — we want to be a serious decision-support tool - The 7-day money-back guarantee means there's no risk to try
If you're a PM making 2-3 real decisions a week, that's $500/month. Cheaper than a half-day consultant, faster than a meeting with your team.
## What we got wrong
We also caught ourselves saying "10+ hours saved per decision." That number was aspirational — we hadn't measured it. It's gone from the page. We don't have testimonials yet because we haven't had paying customers. We'll add them when we do.
The hardest part of building a product honestly is admitting when you don't have evidence yet. We're 9 commits into the repo. We have a working core, an API, a database, a dashboard. We don't have users. We don't have data on whether this actually helps people make better decisions.
What we have is a working tool that one person (the founder) has used to frame three real product decisions this week. All three felt sharper after running them through the brief. That sample size of one is not evidence, but it's a starting point.
## Try it
If you're a PM who wants to frame a decision the right way, [order a brief](/brief). It's $49. If it's not useful, we'll refund you. No questions, no friction.
We won't promise "24 hours." We'll just send it.