Senior product designer, Growth
2022–2024
I helped to grow the Pitch user base to more than one million teams
Pitch is a presentation builder SaaS. Our target audience were small businesses using slide decks to win new work.
+560%
Presentation templates shared
+200%
Presentation templates created
+36%
Workspace invitations sent
+27%
Workspaces made discoverable
+16%
Documents created overall
The core of our growth flywheel and the center of my attention as a product designer was team activation
As collaborative software, Pitch delivers the most value when used by a team. Naturally, the adoption process starts with the first team member—the champion.
Mitsuaki
The Champion
I needed to get him signed up as quickly as possible and demonstrate the value of Pitch in the first few minutes. After that, I wanted him to start collaborating with the rest of his team.
Getting the first team member signed up: I analyzed data, conducted A/B tests, and improved the onboarding flow
I reviewed the existing onboarding UI and the qualitative and quantitative research data. Then, I created a Figma file to serve as a foundation for the Growth team discussions.
With A/B testing, we increased the number of workspace invitations by 36%
Seb (the product manager) and I focused on the flows crucial for unlocking growth: making workspaces discoverable and inviting team members.
By tweaking the UI, we increased these key metrics by 27% and 36%, respectively.
The new onboarding UI is more personalized, visual, and easier to follow. It also performs better and works on any device
Progress indicators help users successfully finish longer tasks, so I added one. I also created more personalized copy so that the person signing up feels like they're getting value out of the whole process.
Video
“How can this app help me?” — using a slide deck to explain why this presentation software is better than your current one
This experiment was very meta. I created a Pitch presentation highlighting the core app features and workflows. Every new user landed in it instead of the empty dashboard.
Video
Unfortunately, this approach did not work as intended. People landing in the presentation editor didn't know the rest of the app (dashboards, analytics, team workspaces, etc.) existed. They thought the editor was all there was to Pitch, left, and never returned.
We ultimately used the data and learnings from this failed experiment to improve the onboarding process for the Pitch AI presentation builder.
We conducted a lot of interviews. Turns out, one of the most critical features for teams is in-app brand management
"Sure, this is a nice app, but how do I add our brand font to the presentation?" We kept hearing this even when talking to folks about unrelated topics, so we built an MVP brand-management feature.
The initial experimental UI allowed people to build a presentation template using their brand colors and fonts.
Video
One of my biggest challenges was fixing how styling works in Pitch in general. It involved lengthy discussions with everyone, from the engineers to the department and product heads.
Video
In the end, it was more feasible to build around the issue than rewriting the foundational codebase. Nevertheless, I learned a lot — from the engineering behind web typography to selling my work internally.
Unfortunately, this case study ends here
In January 2024, I was abruptly laid off from Pitch alongside 75% of my wonderful coworkers. You know, money problems and all that.
Obviously, future product development is entirely out of my hands now. I would like to see Pitch continue making it easier for people to use the app with their existing software.
With B2B tools, nothing happens in isolation. Teams often make their purchase decisions based on how much effort (and resources) it will cost to migrate to another platform.
To truly become "the future of presentation software," Pitch must integrate with other ubiquitous business tools, such as cloud storage solutions, marketing and sales apps, or CRMs.
