Let's start with the customer.
The climb to Base Camp is a free preview. By continuing, you accept the Terms and Privacy Policy.
Let's start with the customer.
The climb to Base Camp is a free preview. By continuing, you accept the Terms and Privacy Policy.
AI thought partner for customer-obsessed innovation
Topo™ starts with your customer and works backwards to the insight that matters most: the one that decides what your new product or service must do for them. From there, Topo keeps your team on one story, all the way to launch, following THE CRUX Method, rooted in the Working Backwards process that produced Amazon Prime and AWS.
Topo works in English, Italian, Japanese, and Korean.
Why Topo
An idea gathers momentum before anyone has checked whose problem it solves. The result is a plan that keeps getting sent back, a launch that misses, or a product nobody asked for.
Leadership sees one problem. The people who meet customers every day see another. Nobody has written down which one you are solving.
Ask three people why this product exists and you get three answers. That is a warning sign, not a detail.
Once the most senior voice has spoken, the room stops testing the idea and starts collecting evidence for it.
Sound familiar?
A startup's first product, a new line of business, a product roadmap, a service experience. If there is a customer and a market, Topo can work with you.
Most AI will say your idea is a good one, then help you build it. Topo first asks: how do you know? Topo starts from the customer, surfaces the data and assumptions underneath the idea, and recommends what to test before anything gets built.
However plausible the idea, Topo checks the assumptions underneath it before it helps you move.
The order of the questions lives in THE CRUX Method. You never have to work out what to ask when.
Topo weighs the evidence and recommends direction and next steps. The decisions stay with your team.
How it works
Topo starts with your customer and works backwards, following THE CRUX Method. The Method is rooted in the Working Backwards process that produced Amazon Prime and AWS. Topo applies it rigorously, on the latest frontier AI models, in three stages. Like a climb.
1 · Establish base camp
Surface research, build customer empathy, and define a problem worth solving.
2 · Navigate the crux
Explore broadly, invent a solution that delivers the most important customer benefit, and write the customer story: a press release and FAQ that stakeholders can approve.
3 · Push to the summit
Surface and test key assumptions, build the product, validate with customers, define success, and move from story to reality by launching the new product, service, or experience.
The team, at every stage
You and your team
Judge every step based on your lived experience and business context. You own the decisions.
Topo
Asks the questions following THE CRUX Method, weighs the evidence, and recommends direction and next steps.
Frontier AI
Researches, reasons, and organizes under Topo's direction.
Topo embodies THE CRUX Method, built on decades of experience in customer-centric innovation.
Bring an idea, a business challenge, or something you noticed. Topo's first job is to turn it into a customer problem worth solving, and to be clear about whose problem it is. Then the climb begins.
Topo announces each question at just the right moment in the climb, helping you and your team focus and challenging you to dive deeper.
What you get
The press release and FAQ (PRFAQ) is your living product document and source of truth as you and your team push to the summit and prepare for launch. Topo reads it like a trusted teammate, leaves comments in the document, and when one fact changes, helps you manage the ripple effect of that change through the entire document.
Press Release · Customer FAQ · Stakeholder FAQ
Topo keeps your idea moving: one document, always current, tailored for each audience, gaining strength at every review until launch. Topo adds appendices as the climb needs them, through progressive elaboration.
"Where a general-purpose AI took more than ten prompts to get near a direction, Topo got there in one or two exchanges. Hand the same task to a staff member and it often drifts; Topo reached the heart of it in a short conversation."
Two ways to start
THE CRUX brings deep expertise in customer-obsessed innovation and decades of experience working with organizations of all sizes around the world. We work alongside your team, with Topo in every session, supporting you and your team from initial insights to product launch. Professional services from the people who built the Method.