Defining and launching a zero-to-one financial operations product for small businesses
Zero-to-one financial operations platform
2022 - 2023
LegalZoom
Project context
Customer problem
Small business owners using LegalZoom lacked a simple, affordable way to get paid and manage finances with confidence. Existing options were either manual and error-prone or overly complex and expensive for their needs.
Objective
Define and launch a new financial operations product that moved LegalZoom beyond one-off business formation into a durable software-as-a-service platform.
My role
Principal product designer acting as both design and product lead, responsible for turning executive-level ambiguity into a clear product strategy, experience architecture, and launch-ready system across web and iOS.
Key decisions made
Ambiguity to product clarity
Translated a vague CEO direction into a focused product definition through competitive analysis, customer inference, and storyboarded experience vision.
Outcome
Aligned leadership and engineering around a clear product direction that prioritized fast time-to-value over feature breadth.
Design as product driver
Owned product definition, sequencing, and scope decisions in the absence of a dedicated PM, partnering directly with executive leadership and engineering.
Outcome
Enabled the team to move quickly with shared clarity, reducing churn and rework during a compressed launch timeline.
Design for customer confidence
Advocated for WYSIWYG invoice creation and structured data entry to balance customer confidence with long-term compliance needs.
Outcome
Delivered an experience that felt simple and intuitive while supporting accurate bookkeeping and tax workflows under the hood.
Architecture designed to scale
Defined a job-based experience architecture and shared entities that could support future expansion without rework.
Outcome
The system absorbed major scope expansion (documents, e-signatures, proposals) without requiring foundational redesign.
