Pivoting Henry into Typelane at my first company. Our AI check-in product worked, but HR buyers wouldn't put an AI between the company and employee sentiment. We rebuilt around onboarding instead, and Typelane was acquired in 2022.

The problem. At my first company, co-founded in 2016, our product Henry ran AI-driven weekly employee check-ins. It worked, but HR buyers wouldn't put an AI between the company and employee sentiment. That was a trust problem in the buyer, not a product gap, and no iteration would fix it.

The response. Instead of abandoning the customer, we looked at where HR actually spent their time. It concentrated in onboarding. We built Typelane to solve that, with the automation running quietly underneath rather than sold as AI. The work was welcomed because it removed real pain.

The outcome. As sole designer I worked directly with customers, ran workshops and testing, built frontend, and led product and recruitment. Typelane became profitable and was acquired at the end of 2022.