10x-ing lead generation and shipping an award-winning field-service app — my first run owning both marketing and product design.

My Role

I owned marketing and product design, and managed four other designers through the work.

The Problem

A crowded market and limited capital. The engineering team was strong, but there was very little marketing traction to show for the product they were building.

Constraints

Not much capital, which meant ROI had to be provable and provable quickly. The product surface was also wide, so “improve the app” was not an actionable brief.

Process — testing the market before designing for it

Rather than trying to solve for every possible customer, I ran A/B tests against specific verticals. The tests showed we could win HVAC and plumbing leads outright — and, more importantly, that those customers stayed with us longer once they arrived.

That finding is what let the company pivot and scale. On the back of it the founder asked me to redesign the app, and I led the mobile and desktop redesign, managing the design team through delivery.

Key Decisions

Verticalizing instead of broad-targeting. The pivotal call was narrowing to HVAC and plumbing rather than chasing the whole field-service market. In a fast-moving startup with limited capital, focus won.

Taking the redesign to the industry. The app redesign was the largest project I had taken on at that point. After launch we brought it to a major field-service conference, where it won Best Mobile App Design — a genuinely proud moment for the team.

Outcome

10x lead-generation volume. The mobile app won “Best Field Service App.” HubSpot featured the testimonial page I built as a top-ten model to follow. The company was subsequently acquired by HomeAdvisor.

Reflection

My most fun, energetic, and formative early role. High chaos, high output — I sat at the table with the three founders and two lead engineers, and the six of us produced a remarkable amount of good work in a short time.