Discovery Call: Justin Rancourt (Coalesce)

Date: Thursday, March 20, 2026 at 3pm
Context: Intro through wife at women's mastermind. Justin is Co-Founder and Director of Architecture at Coalesce (coalesce.nyc), a NYC digital product agency founded in 2006. They built a custom LMS for Knopman Marks, a financial training company. This is a relationship call, not a sales call.

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LMS War Stories

"When you built the Knopman Marks platform, what did you wish you'd known at the start that you only figured out mid-build?"

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"What was the hardest thing to get right on the learning experience side, not the tech side?"

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"If you were starting that project today, what would you do completely differently?"

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The Learner Side

"Did you get much visibility into how learners actually used the platform vs. how the client assumed they would?"

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"What engagement or retention problems did you see that surprised you?"

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The Market

"Do you see a lot of demand for custom LMS work still, or are most clients just landing on off-the-shelf tools like Teachable or Thinkific?"

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"Where do you see the biggest gaps in what existing platforms offer for technical education specifically?"

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Naturally Surfacing Your Value

"Have you ever worked with a client where the real bottleneck wasn't the platform but the people using it, like the engineers who were supposed to be learning?"

Notes: every product people can find issues. constantly talking to users. get feedback. going to have to figure out which feedback you need to ignore or which to pay attention to.

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Close (Save for the End)

"Is there anyone in your world you think I should talk to as I'm building this out?"

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General Notes / Follow-ups

$2k minimum a month retainer.

seperate business.