Why great brands are stolen, not created — and how to find your visual direction w/ Zach Stevens

Taste, quality and what it actually takes to build software people love (w/ Bob Baxley)

A lot of SaaS products ship fast and skip the thinking. This episode is about what happens when you don't, and why that actually matters for growth. Bob Baxley spent 35 years designing software at Apple, Yahoo, Pinterest, and ThoughtSpot. Products he worked on have been used by hundreds of millions of people. He's one of those people who has spent a long time thinking carefully about what makes software genuinely good, not just functional, and why so few companies get there. In this conversation, we get into how to build a culture where quality is the standard, how to get your whole company to care about design without a single presentation, and how the decisions you make at the conceptual level shape everything downstream.   🧠 What you'll learn in this episode: 0:00 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew] - Why the tech industry is in a speed race and what that means for product quality 7:37 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=457s] - How Bob fell in love with computing at 11 years old and why that shaped everything after 12:31 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=751s] - Why timing matters as much as talent when it comes to what you can build 13:58 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=838s] - How economic pressure from VCs is changing the pace of design work inside companies 24:36 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=1476s] - The real difference between sales-led and product-led companies, and why it never changes after founding 27:05 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=1625s] - Why design teams have hurt themselves by hiding their process from the rest of the company 30:00 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=1800s] - How Bob's team ran an internal influence campaign at ThoughtSpot using weekly Loom videos 35:49 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=2149s] - What a head of design actually does on a sales call and why it worked 37:42 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=2262s] - Design tenets vs. design principles, and which one actually helps teams make decisions 42:30 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=2550s] - What choreography over control looks like in practice for a design leader 47:51 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=2871s] - The difference between micromanagement and being in the details, and why it matters 54:55 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=3295s] - How to think about quality within constraints instead of chasing world class as a target 1:00:46 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=3646s] - Why taste is hard to compete on, and which layer of the market you actually need to nail first 1:01:15 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=3675s] - A simple exercise to raise the taste level of your engineering team 1:06:08 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=3968s] - The three stages every market goes through before design becomes a competitive advantage 1:12:36 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=4356s] - What it really means to design for the person on the other side of the glass 1:16:57 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=4617s] - Why user research needs to be a ritual, not a one-time sprint 1:20:44 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=4844s] - The Post-it note observation that turned into a multi-billion dollar company 1:24:29 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in95y6B0Pew&t=5069s] - Bob's favorite apps and what they got right at the conceptual model level 💡 Actionable takeaways from Bob Steal these quick wins: 1. Run the "three favorite apps" exercise with your team Ask everyone to name their three favorite apps .Not the ones they use most, their actual favorites. Getting your team to sit with that question starts a real conversation about what quality actually means versus what just has good distribution.  2. Show the work before it's done Bob's team at ThoughtSpot made a 22-minute Loom video every week for 35 weeks, showing projects at every stage and sent it to the whole company. It shifted how every department understood and valued design work, without a single big presentation or formal pitch. If your team feels invisible inside the company, this is a low-cost way to change that. 3. Replace your design principles with tenets Principles like "be clear" or "feel responsive" don't help anyone make a decision because nobody argues the opposite. A tenet is a hard-edged statement your team agrees on once so they stop relitigating the same debate.  4. Go watch your users outside the context of your product When Bob was asked about ZenMaid, his recommendation was to visit cleaning business owners and understand how they think and run their business, not just how they use the software. Watching how someone actually works, before you introduce your product into the conversation, gives you better ideas than any feature interview. 5. Ask an LLM you've been using regularly: "What outdated mindset am I holding onto that's no longer serving me?" The answer Bob got shifted how he thought about control and leadership. His suggestion is to run it with an LLM that has enough context on you to give a real answer, not a generic one.

Positioning is a decision, not a tagline & the truth behind the AI hype (w/ Anthony Pierri)

If you're a SaaS founder who keeps rewriting your homepage and it still doesn't feel right, this episode is for you. Anthony Pierri is the co-founder of Fletch PMM. He and his team have run their 2-week positioning sprint around 500 times for B2B software companies, which probably makes them the most experienced positioning consultancy out there. He's also one of the clearest, least jargon-filled voices on LinkedIn when it comes to marketing. We spent an hour going deep on what positioning actually is (and isn't), why so many founders are stuck running five go-to-market motions at once without realizing it, and what happens when you make a real repositioning bet — with stories from Klaviyo, Anthropic, a trucking analytics company, and even Taylor Swift. We also got into AI — specifically, what Anthony discovered when he stopped using chatbots and went deep into Claude Code. His take is the most grounded I've heard in months. No fluff. No frameworks for the sake of frameworks. Just one of the sharpest operators in B2B marketing talking shop. 💡 Steal these quick wins from Anthony 1. Test your positioning by putting it on the homepage Not a Google Drive deck. Not a Notion page. The homepage. It's the one asset everyone in the company has to live with publicly, which is exactly why agreement on it sticks. If your team can't agree on what should go on the homepage, you don't have a positioning problem — you have an unresolved strategic decision. 2. Stop defining your target market by firmographics Company size, headcount, geo — none of these signals tell you whether a company actually needs your product. If you're trying to win five use cases inside one customer segment, you're running five different go-to-market motions in parallel. Pick the one that ladders into the biggest opportunity and lead with it. 3. Don't validate a reposition by asking your best customers They came to you for the old story. They'll tell you not to change. Customer research is one input — not the only one. The bet sometimes requires alienating who you have to win who you want. 4. Stop treating chatbot output as real work Anthony's experiment: dropping 20 sales call transcripts into a chatbot got him a summary in 10 seconds. Looked great. Then he wrote a detailed instruction file for the AI on exactly how to summarize one call — took 2 hours to build, 5 minutes to run on a single call. The realization: the fast chatbot version was producing something that looked plausible without doing the work. If you're using AI for anything where accuracy matters, the painstaking version is the real version. 5. Build for where the AI is going to actually be useful: smarter automation Don't build your strategy around AI replacing your team. Build it around AI replacing the slow, manual workflows that already exist (the stuff you'd otherwise build in Zapier or hire a junior to do). That's where the real productivity lives today.

Designing for delight, reducing design debt & using AI to prototype faster (w/ Alicja Suska)

Alicja Suska has been designing SaaS products for 10 years. She's worked at Toggle, Sourcegraph, and now leads product design at Buffer. What caught my attention: she comes from an artistic background — illustration and animation. That shapes how she designs. Colors, composition, how elements work together — it comes more intuitively. But she admits the process is harder to explain: "I can reason why something is good, but I work more intuitively." 🧠 What you'll learn in this episode: 0:00 - Jim's intro  0:25 - Who is Alicja and her journey through Toggle, Sourcegraph, and Buffer 3:00 - Designing for vastly different users: solo creators vs enterprise teams 5:24 - How to define taste as a designer (and why delight is more practical) 9:44 - Why delight only works after you've solved the core problem 10:26 - How an artistic background shapes product design thinking 15:33 - Sketching and showing rough work early (not polished mockups) 17:45 - Using AI in the design process: what works and what doesn't 21:30 - Prototyping Buffer Insights with Claude: 40+ concepts in one project 29:24 - The shiny object syndrome: wasting time on overhyped AI tools 31:41 - Designing AI features without screaming "this is AI" 39:15 - Enterprise vs consumer: when to be transparent about AI usage 40:04 - Onboarding philosophy: get users into the product as soon as possible 43:12 - Buffer's experiment: showing the UI before asking users to connect channels 46:18 - Credit card upfront vs free trial: what the data actually showed 49:18 - Time to value: identifying the real aha moment (it might not be what you think) 52:09 - Design debt: how navigation bloat quietly kills your product 55:01 - Why you need a dedicated designer who owns the product long-term 58:57 - Process hack: weekly time-to-value brainstorming sessions 1:04:38 - "Release what you're proud of" — Buffer's shift away from shipping fast 1:08:46 - Alicja's favorite products right now and why 💡 Steal these quick wins from Alicja: Show the product UI before asking for commitment. Buffer stopped blocking users with "connect your channel" upfront. Now they show the calendar first. Users explore, then connect when ready. Less friction, more trust. Design your empty states like onboarding screens. Most users skip onboarding anyway. They land on an empty screen that wasn't designed for being empty. Make your empty states guide users to the next action — not just fill space. Run a monthly "time to value" session. Alicja blocks 1-2 hours monthly to brainstorm: how can we shorten time to value? No big project commitment. Just one brainstorm + one small dev task. Fixes pile up over time. Use Claude to prototype before devs write code. Alicja brainstormed 40+ feature concepts with Claude, then had it generate interactive HTML prototypes using Buffer's design system. The team could experience features before any code was written. Audit your navigation every time you add a feature. The default pattern is "add another tab at the top." Eventually you run out of space and unimportant things sit at the same level as critical ones. Review navigation with every addition.

Why great brands are stolen, not created — and how to find your visual direction w/ Zach Stevens

This is Love at First Try — a podcast for SaaS founders and developers who care about design but aren't designers themselves. Zach Stevens is one of the co-founders of Conversion Factory, a marketing agency that works with growth-stage software companies. He runs their design team and has spent years helping SaaS brands go from scrappy to polished — without losing what makes them unique. I wanted to talk to Zach because he's a growth-focused designer. He doesn't just make things look good — he thinks about how design serves the business. And in this episode, we get into how to define your brand's vibe, why stealing from the right references matters, and how to make sure your design supports your marketing instead of fighting against it. 🧠 What you'll learn in this episode: 0:00 - Intro 0:25 - Who Zach is and what Conversion Factory does for SaaS companies 1:00 - Zach's origin story: from almost joining the Marines to meeting mentors who shaped Amazon's brand strategy 4:45 - The difference between a designer who just makes things pretty and one who solves business problems 7:15 - Aphantasia: why some people can't visualize ideas and what it means for design 11:50 - How Zach defines taste as a designer 13:58 - The Gap by Ira Glass: why your taste develops faster than your skills 17:27 - Why great brands are stolen, not created — and how Liquid Death proves it 21:20 - How AI changes the role of creative direction (you don't need to draw it yourself anymore) 23:40 - When beautiful design hurts conversions: the Adeline website breakdown 30:06 - The fine line between design that serves marketing and design that's just art 34:35 - How to add humanity to SaaS websites without looking like a stock photo catalog 38:43 - Why the emotion you want to convey matters more than how technical your audience is 43:12 - The branding spectrum exercise: masculine vs feminine, luxury vs affordable, subtle vs expressive 47:09 - Brands on fire vs brands on ice: how to stay creative without losing consistency 50:43 - Why typography alone can completely shift your brand's vibe 53:53 - The Mentor Cruise rebrand: from utilitarian to premium using vintage Porsche ads as inspiration 1:00:04 - How much should founder taste influence brand direction? 1:04:04 - Zach's favorite products right now: Cora, Mile IQ, and ChatGPT for thinking out loud 💡 Actionable takeaways from Zach Steal these quick wins: Define the feeling before the visuals. Before picking colors or fonts, ask: "How do I want people to feel when they interact with my brand?" Everything else follows from that answer. Use the branding spectrum exercise. Map where your brand sits on spectrums like masculine vs feminine, luxury vs affordable, subtle vs expressive. It helps you spot mismatches before you start designing. Steal from what makes you feel the way you want others to feel. Zach's team pulled from vintage Porsche ads for Mentor Cruise because Dominic wanted that timeless, premium vibe. Find your reference points outside your industry. Design should serve marketing, not lead it. If your website looks amazing but the message gets buried, you've prioritized aesthetics over conversions. Copy first, then design around it. Add humanity carefully. Photos of people can make your SaaS feel more relatable — but only if the vibe matches. A playful brand like PostHog uses pixel art hedgehogs instead of faces. Match the emotion, not the tactic. Typography sets the tone. The same sentence in a geometric sans-serif feels modern and clean. In a serif with thick-to-thin contrast, it feels wise and nostalgic. Pick fonts that match your intended feeling. Stay between fire and ice. "Brands on fire" are chaotic — nothing matches. "Brands on ice" are boring and rigid. The best brands have consistency with room for spontaneity depending on context.

Why tactical playbooks fail & the money moments framework w/ Marc Thomas

Marc Thomas wrote an annual upgrade email for Senja that listed 10 stupid products you could buy with the $58 you'd save. A scarf shaped like a receipt. Random Amazon finds. People took screenshots and shared it on Twitter and LinkedIn. That's the kind of marketing brain I wanted on the podcast. Marc's path: magazine journalist → SaaS founder (live polling tool) → Head of Growth at Powered by Search (working with $10-100M ARR clients) → Growth at Podia → now independent lifecycle marketing consultant. What I appreciate about him: he doesn't look or feel like a typical marketeer. More playful, more artistic. He understands the fundamentals but puts a creative twist on everything. 🧠 What you'll learn in this episode: 0:00 - Intro 1:01 - Marc's journey from journalism to SaaS marketing 9:51 - Why tactical playbooks are dead by the time you hear them 15:25 - The Senja annual upgrade email that went viral 19:27 - How Podia found undervalued influencers in their own user base 26:07 - How Marc defines taste (and the Tony Wilson / Factory Records story) 31:00 - Habits for developing your creative taste 34:47 - Why filtering yourself kills your best ideas 37:49 - The "money moments" framework for lifecycle marketing 40:13 - How Podia restructured onboarding based on actual buying behavior 44:29 - Why you're probably not sending enough email (and the data to prove it) 47:31 - How many emails to send in an onboarding sequence 50:54 - The key emails every trial sequence needs 54:09 - Marc's favorite tools: Sunsama, Whisper Flow, Manus 💡 Steal these quick wins from Marc: 1. Separate strategic from tactical playbooks. Strategic = "emails help because people live in their inbox." Tactical = "do this exact LinkedIn ad format." Strategic playbooks stay valuable. Tactical ones are saturated by the time you hear about them. 2. Find your money moments. Any moment where someone could give you money or take it away deserves a dedicated email sequence. Not just onboarding and win-back. 3. Send pricing early. Don't wait. Day 2 or 3 of your trial, send an email explaining your plans and who each one is for. People don't look at your pricing page as much as you think. 4. Send more email than feels comfortable. At Podia, they went from 4 emails/month to 12. Result: 12% bump in paid conversions on email days, with a trailing effect for days after. Another client saw 60% revenue increase on email days. 5. Front-load your onboarding. Day 1 and 2 are the most important. Marc sends 2-3 emails on day 1 alone for some clients. Then taper off: daily for week 1, then less frequent through day 30. 6. Make your emails worth sharing. The Senja email worked because it was useful AND entertaining. Brand win + referral win in one.