How bol.com kills ideas
based on Discovery Insights

​Dear Reader,​

This is the second part of my mini-series on how bol.com, one of Europe’s largest e-commerce companies, shapes its fintech products. Last week, we looked at how they combine regulatory compliance with customer value. This week, we'll look at how they adapt discovery practices to their unique context, leading to killed ideas and adapted strategic directions.

Sometimes, the most valuable discovery insights come from failed attempts to follow "best practices." When bol.com's fintech team wanted to improve their fraud prevention products, they naturally planned to interview users. There was just one problem: their target audience were non-paying partners and partners that misuse the platform. "We quickly realized traditional user interviews wouldn't work here," Damien Folkerts explains with a laugh. "You can't exactly put out a call for interviews with people actively trying to deceive your platform."

This example illustrates a broader pattern in their discovery practice: when traditional methods don't fit, they find pragmatic alternatives that work for their context. "It's about understanding what you're trying to learn and finding the right way to get there," Folkerts notes.

This means not abandoning Discovery at all, just because you can’t do it by the book. Instead, work from whatever starting point you’re at right now and focus on what you want to achieve through Discovery practices, and then utilize methods accordingly.

But discovery insights don't just kill individual feature ideas – they can challenge fundamental assumptions about product strategy. When investigating how to improve their partner payout system, the team started with an obvious goal: create a standardized payout schedule that would work for all sellers.

"Our initial research revealed something unexpected," Folkerts shares. "Different types of sellers had radically different cash flow needs." Some sellers, particularly larger ones, preferred predictable monthly payments. Others, often smaller businesses, needed faster access to their earnings. This insight didn't just kill the one-size-fits-all solution – it led to rethinking how they segmented their seller base for financial products.

This bottom-up discovery pattern, where tactical research reveals strategic opportunities, appears throughout more Discovery efforts. When exploring buy-now-pay-later options, they discovered distinct consumer segments with different relationships to credit. While investigating VAT handling improvements, they found varying levels of tax expertise among their international sellers.

The key insight? While "best practice" discovery methods are valuable starting points, the most critical insights often come from adapting these practices to your context. Sometimes that means finding creative alternatives to user interviews. Other times, it means letting tactical discovery reshape your strategic thinking.

Next week, in the final piece of this series, we'll explore how bol.com made its goal-setting more pragmatic and what routines they never skip.

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Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

PS: The most scenic AeroPress brew I got to do (yet) from a few weeks ago during a family vacation in Austria

How to Dive Deeper into Product Discovery

Learn how I helped companies like Deutsche Telekom and Forto hone their Product Discovery practices. I closely work with product organizations through workshops and coaching to introduce and adapt Product Discovery.

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Who is Tim Herbig?

As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions.

I focus on better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery.