Before You Leap

Overview

Before You Leap (BYL) is CENTAUR's flagship product — a validation-as-a-service platform that helps founders stress-test their startup ideas before writing a single line of product code. The core thesis: most early-stage failures are market failures, not execution failures. BYL surfaces that signal early.

The product pairs a high-conversion bilingual landing page (EN/DE) with an AI-powered market research engine, live lead capture, and a consulting-grade sprint methodology.

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What I Built

AI Market Research Engine — "Quick Market Check"

Designed and implemented a four-stage Business Advisory Council pipeline using the Perplexity sonar model:

1. Market Strategist — TAM, CAGR, macro tailwinds
2. Competitive Intelligence Director — incumbents, saturation, white space
3. Go-to-Market & Revenue Expert — buyer profile, willingness to pay, CAC dynamics
4. Chief Strategy Officer — synthesises all three into a single authoritative verdict

The first three calls run in parallel via Promise.all, feeding into a synthesis prompt that returns structured JSON (PROCEED / NICHE / CROWDED) with a consultant-tone summary and three ranked strategic recommendations. Footnote markers are stripped programmatically before any text reaches the UI.

Bilingual Landing Page (EN/DE)

Built on Next.js 16 App Router with next-intl v4. Implemented full locale detection via proxy.ts (Next.js 16's renamed middleware), and created the typed navigation layer (createNavigation) required for in-place locale switching without page reload.

Page architecture: 14-section conversion funnel — Hero → TrustBar → Problem → Solution → Process → IntentLadder → Testimonials → About → Qualification → Pricing → Guarantee → FAQ → FinalCTA → QuickCheck.

Lead Capture Infrastructure

Replaced a broken ConvertKit webhook with a proper MailerLite API v2 integration:

• /api/subscribe route handles both the hero email form and the post-QuickCheck capture
• Source tagging (hero / quickcheck) for segmentation
• Optional group assignment via MAILERLITE_GROUP_ID env var

DevOps & Deployment

• Managed Vercel deployment via REST API (CLI unavailable in environment) — project lookup, deployment listing, build log retrieval
• Diagnosed and fixed Railway deployment: wrong root directory (/ → backend/), missing ResearchRunner class causing ImportError on startup
• Resolved Next.js 16 build failure: middleware.ts / proxy.ts conflict from naming change between major versions
• Maintained clean PR-based deployment workflow to satisfy Vercel Hobby plan author restrictions

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Key Technical Decisions

Perplexity over GitHub API — The original implementation scraped GitHub for similar repositories. This consistently returned zero results from Vercel's serverless egress (rate-limited / blocked). Replaced with Perplexity sonar, which provides real market research with live web context and supports structured JSON output.

Multi-agent synthesis over single prompt — A single prompt asking for market analysis, competitive intelligence, and revenue assessment produces averaged, hedged output. Splitting into specialist personas with constrained scope per call, then synthesising, produces sharper, more actionable results — the same structure used in real strategy engagements.

next-intl createNavigation for locale switching — The naive approach (manipulating the URL path directly via next/navigation) breaks with localePrefix: 'as-needed' because the plain router has no concept of locale. createNavigation(routing) produces locale-aware useRouter / usePathname hooks that handle the prefix logic correctly.

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Results

• Bilingual landing page live and deploying on merge
• QuickCheck delivering real market research (3–5s) vs. previous fake random results
• Lead capture working end-to-end through MailerLite
• Full EN/DE locale switching functional in navigation
• Build pipeline stable on Next.js 16 + Turbopack

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Stack: Next.js 16 · FastAPI · Railway · Vercel · Perplexity API · MailerLite · next-intl
Status: Live in production

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