From a vague brief to a shortlist worth comparing.
Most tools start at the query box. Whittl starts one step earlier — at the brief itself — then carries that thinking through eight phases of framing, discovery, and comparison as one continuous process, not a pile of disconnected tools.
Problem framing
Articulate the real challenge before searching for answers.
Intelligent challenge
Ask the questions people forget to ask, before they cost you a quarter.
Structured discovery
Turn exploration into a process you can repeat and defend.
Decision memory
Store the path taken, not just the final answer.
The eight phases
Problem Refinement
Whittl starts with a quick question about your industry, then pushes back on the brief before anything gets searched — stripping out assumed solutions and narrowing a vague challenge to what it actually is. The value: every phase after this one is judged against the real problem, not the first framing of it.
Discovery Framing
Together you fill in the rest of the picture — organisation, geography, regulatory context, and how open you are to startups versus established players — then define what good looks like: weighted criteria and hard constraints. This turns "find us something good" into a scorecard, so later every option can be ranked against the same yardstick instead of gut feel.
Market Scan
Whittl scans same-industry, adjacent-industry, and cross-industry signals to see how others are approaching similar problems. The value is perspective: the best answer to your problem may already exist a few industries over.
Solution Areas
Whittl maps the solution space into distinct categories — broad directions worth exploring, each with pros, cons, and fit against your criteria. You pick which areas are worth going deeper on, before any specific vendor or product enters the picture.
Longlist
For every selected area, Whittl surfaces real, verifiable options — companies, products, and non-tech approaches — each with the evidence behind why it's relevant. Wide enough that you don't miss the option you didn't know existed.
Shortlist & Profiles
The longlist gets narrowed into structured profiles — scored against your weighted criteria, with confidence signals and flags called out explicitly. You're comparing what matters, not reading marketing pages.
Outreach
Optional. For shortlisted solutions, Whittl builds a grounded question bank and ready-to-send drafts that target what's still unknown — sent from your own inbox, on your terms. Nothing explored gets lost; the questions are the ones the profiles couldn't already answer.
A double diamond
Phases 4 through 6 run the same pattern twice: Whittl proposes wide, you narrow down. Once for solution areas, once for the longlist.
Solution areas
Whittl proposes the broad directions worth considering. You narrow them down to the ones worth exploring further.
Longlist to shortlist
Whittl builds out a longlist of real, evidence-backed options inside the areas you chose. You narrow that down to a shortlist worth comparing.