THE CHALLENGE

SIMPLIFYING THE BUSINESS-BUILDING PROCESS

Starting a business is messy and nonlinear. First-time founders are typically passionate about their ideas but struggle with fundamentals like problem validation, customer needs, financial structure, positioning, and go-to-market.

Many startups fail simply because they never address a real user need.

KAI’s mission was to turn that chaotic journey into a guided experience that helps founders avoid common pitfalls while making the process feel intuitive and motivating, not academic or intimidating.

USER RESEARCH

UNDERSTANDING OUR USERS AND THEIR JOURNEY

Because users enter KAI at different stages of their entrepreneurial path, it was essential to fully map their entire journey:

• Emotional state and confidence level
• What they struggle with vs. what they think they struggle with
• Where they need structure vs. autonomy
• Which moments require education, nudging, or reflection
• How their needs evolve through the lifecycle

This mapping aligned the entire team—and external stakeholders—around a shared understanding of the founder journey. It allowed us to define clear product goals and build a coherent strategy from day one.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

TURNING COMPLEX PROCESSES INTO SMALL TASKS

Entrepreneurship involves an enormous amount of information and decisions. To make this accessible, I designed an information architecture that broke the complexity into:

• Clear steps
• Bite-sized tasks
• Lightweight educational moments
• Immediate feedback loops

This approach helped inexperienced founders progress with confidence while still building toward the larger business strategy.

A robust onboarding flow was designed to personalize the journey. Based on a user’s background, stage, and needs, KAI adapted the experience to provide relevant tasks and guidance.

THE RESULT

MAKING BUSINESS BUILDING FUN

KAI transformed business creation into a manageable, structured experience. With version one, users could develop and validate their ideas simply by completing small tasks and those tasks generated the foundation of a real investor deck.

Future iterations of KAI were designed to connect founders with investors, corporates, and innovation partners, turning the app into both a learning tool and an opportunity pipeline.

The app supported two modes of progress:
Bottom-up: performing small tasks that gradually build the full business structure.
Top-down: viewing the entire business at a glance through the Business Page, showing progress across core divisions and highlighting what to tackle next.

This dual approach empowered founders to zoom in and out — something crucial for users who often feel lost in the details.

GO-TO-MARKET

SXSW 2019 LAUNCH

As part of our early validation and awareness strategy, I helped define and execute our SXSW presence. I personally took ownership of:

• Creating a playful T-shirt concept that generated organic foot traffic
• Demoing the PoC to hundreds of visitors
• Speaking with potential users, partners, and investors
• Conducting live field research with our core target audience

Despite the noise and competition at SXSW, our approach stood out. The clarity and simplicity of the product resonated strongly with young founders, validating our usability and overall direction.

A STRATEGIC PIVOT

IMPROVING HEALTHCARE FOR THE UNDERSERVED

The product infrastructure and strategic foundation we built enabled the company to make a major pivot. The founders shifted the platform to focus on improving healthcare outcomes for underserved US communities.

That transition became the basis for OnKai, where I went on to lead product design for the next five years, helping build a multi-product platform used by clinics, foundations, and healthcare organizations.