Take the Guesswork Out of Innovation
CoinJar Insights serves product and growth teams focused on innovation in products, services, and experiences.
We help teams navigate decisions when customer input is abundant but conclusions remain elusive.
Our work identifies and engages deeply experienced customers whose perspectives clarify rather than complicate—
revealing priorities, surfacing blind spots, and grounding teams
in what actually matters in their market.
OUR VISION
Nurturing Innovation in an AI-driven world
Innovation requires more than ideas. It requires knowing which ideas deserve investment.
Generative AI has made it easier than ever to generate possibilities, creating what can feel like an endless stream of potential innovations. For product teams, though, the core challenge hasn’t changed: placing bets on the few directions that will create real value for customers and real impact for the business.
Unless you have unlimited budgets for experimentation and a high tolerance for misfires, progress depends on judgment. That means understanding not just what customers say they want, but which customer perspectives illuminate where a category is heading and what needs to change for products to remain useful and relevant.
CoinJar Insights was founded to help product teams navigate these decisions. We bring a structured approach to identifying and engaging Catalytic Customers—deeply experienced, constructively critical participants in a category whose perspectives tend to clarify rather than dilute decision-making. Their input helps teams test assumptions, surface blind spots, and align around choices they are prepared to act on and stand behind.
Our work is focused on one outcome: helping teams move forward with direction that is grounded, defensible, and worth committing to.
SERVICES
Insights. Inspiration. Implementation
Everything we do begins with a grounding in real insights—drawn from primary research, competitive analyses, and accommodation of your unique culture.
At the center of that work is our focus on Catalytic Customers—highly informed, forward-thinking individuals whose unmet needs and critical perspectives reveal where your category is heading, and what it will take to lead.
We use both conventional and AI-enabled tools to identify and scope opportunities that make a difference.
We work collaboratively with you and your team to craft and refine solutions that address those needs.
And finally, we make sure that you have an effective strategy and full arsenal of tactics to bring those ideas to market.
LEADERSHIP
Paul Peterson
Founder/CEO
Paul has spent more than three decades helping product teams make better decisions, especially when there's plenty of customer input but no shared conclusion. He works with teams facing repeated debates, roadmaps that keep reopening, or decisions that never quite settle, giving them a clearer read on what matters in their category.
As a researcher, facilitator, and strategist, he's helped organizations resolve the questions that stall momentum: what to prioritize, what to let go of, and which assumptions no longer hold. The aim isn't more insight—it's fewer unresolved decisions.
He founded CoinJar Insights to create the kind of consultancy he always wanted to hire: senior people only, no filler, and zero patience for generic findings. Just sharp thinking, honest conversations, and practical paths forward.
Paul developed the Catalytic Customer™ framework to help teams identify the most valuable voices in their category: deeply engaged, forward-thinking, and constructively critical customers who surface issues earlier, more clearly, and with more practical detail than broad customer input. His book, The Catalytic Customer: Accelerating Innovation and Growth from the Outside In, distills distills what he's learned into a blueprint for product and innovation teams who want to build with purpose.
Clients trust Paul not just for his experience, but for how he shows up: thoughtful, curious, refreshingly candid—and deeply committed to work that actually moves the needle.
The name CoinJar is both personal and intentional.
A coin jar isn’t about windfalls or bold bets. It’s about paying attention to what has value, setting it aside deliberately, and letting things accumulate over time.
That idea mirrors how sound product decisions get made. Progress rarely stalls because teams lack ideas or customer input. It stalls when everything is treated as equally important, and there’s no shared judgment about what deserves commitment.
CoinJar reflects our focus on discernment. We help teams recognize which customer perspectives are worth holding onto—the ones that clarify direction, sharpen thinking, and compound into stronger decisions as work unfolds.
It’s also a deliberately unpretentious name. The work is serious, but it doesn’t require mystification. Just focus, discipline, and respect for what actually moves decisions forward.
WHY "COINJAR"?
CLIENT EXPERIENCE
We've had the good fortune to learn from—and with—some of the best.
GET IN TOUCH
CoinJar Insights LLC
755 Baywood Drive
Floor 2, Suite 200
Petaluma, CA 94954
