Overview
As employee #1 at this early stage startup, I worked across the full product lifecycle and helped grow the company from $0-$10k MRR by digging deep to understand our customers’ problems and working with our small, but dedicated team to discover and design solutions that were truly helped our customers in their day-to-day business.
My role at Finger-Ink shifted drastically during my time there. What started as a full-stack mobile development role quickly became a PM/Designer hybrid when it became more and more clear we didn’t have product-market fit and we needed to adapt.
This gave me the opportunity to learn first hand about being customer-focused, understanding their needs and pain points, and designing products that truly met them.
My role was broad, but some of the key areas I focused on include:
- conducting customer interviews, surveys, and continous discovery efforts
- solving a wide variety of product design problems, from brand new features to ongoing improvements
- building out our product’s Information Architecture and key User Flows
- wireframing & rapid prototyping as a way to test ideas early with our customers
- UX writing & microcopy
- working towards product/market fit through a customer-focused lens
- assisting with prioritising the product roadmap
- assisting with key decision making around product strategy to achieve overall business goals
- preparing and writing release notes
Being such a small team designing a global SaaS product, there was a lot of ambiguity and no two days were the same. Being able to adapt was essential and I feel so grateful for the opportunity to receive such a breadth of experience.
My Role
Product Management
UX Designer
Customer Success
App Developer
Timeline
June 2015-December 2020
Key Takeaways
- As employee #1 at this early-stage SaaS startup, I worked across the full product lifecycle – from discovery through to design and development.
- Learned first-hand what it means to be customer-focused and the difference between doing so or not
- Presented with and leaned in to an opportunity to stretch my skills beyond what I was hired for, giving me exposure to the product and business at large and a breadth of experience.
Impact
- Helped niche down to find product-market fit
- Helped grow the company from $0-$10k MRR
Main Activities
Customer Interviews
Surveys
Market Research
Jobs to be done
Wireframing
Rapid Prototyping
UX Design
UX Writing & microcopy
Interaction Design
User Testing
Product Roadmapping
Backlog Grooming
Writing Release Notes
Video Editing
iOS Development