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

Building an AI-powered team & why narrowing our ICP doubled our win rate (w/ Guido Schmitz)

A lot of SaaS teams are adding AI to their stack and hoping it shows up in output. This episode is about what it actually looks like when you build the whole workflow around it and why the thinking behind it matters as much as the tooling. Guido Schmitz is the CTO and co-founder of OneTeam, a mobile platform that helps hospitality and retail companies connect, engage, and develop their frontline workforce. They've been building for 11 years and are shipping faster than ever without growing headcount to do it. In this conversation, we get into how they use AI across every department, how they think about product quality and delight in B2B software, and what actually happened when they stopped selling features and started selling outcomes. 🧠 What you'll learn in this episode: 0:00 - What Love at First Try is about and who it's for 0:55 - How Guido started OneTeam at 19 and what problem they were solving 5:24 - Who OneTeam is built for and why the ICP is so specific 10:30 - What the employee experience looks like before OneTeam, and why onboarding matters more than most companies think 17:10 - The €3,000 cost of losing an employee and why reducing turnover by 1–2% pays for the tool many times over 19:23 - The aha moment for new employees: introducing yourself before your first shift and getting welcomed by colleagues 21:57 - How OneTeam thinks about empty states, animations, and the small details that make B2B software feel less like a chore 25:30 - The growth challenge that comes with building a multi-product platform and how messaging for a broad product is genuinely hard 26:11 - How going from feature selling to outcome selling and narrowing the ICP doubled their win rate 34:32 - The SaaS apocalypse debate and why vibe coding your way out of a $100/month subscription usually doesn't make financial sense 40:55 - How OneTeam adopted Cursor two years ago and why they're seeing roughly 7x the code volume per developer 42:16 - How Guido uses Lovable to prototype feature improvements and get real customer feedback in two to three days 44:26 - The agentic workforce running in Slack: a marketing agent, product agent, engineering agent, analyst, and sales ops agent — and what each one actually does 46:23 - The error-monitoring agent that researches bugs, proposes fixes, runs tests, and opens pull requests for developer review 47:22 - The competitor intelligence report that lands every Monday morning — and why it would have taken five or more people before 1:01:34 - The mental model behind it all: ask what you'd do with 10x the team, then figure out if you can do it agentically 1:05:34 - How AI is changing the design process, and why the idea is now the constraint — not the execution 💡 Actionable takeaways from Guido Steal these quick wins: 1. Start your agentic setup with one scoped job, not a big rollout A good entry point is a single, specific job like a competitor intelligence report that runs every Monday morning. Define what the agent should look at, what it should extract, and where it should drop the output. Build confidence there before you add more. 2. Give new employees a social introduction before their first shift OneTeam built a feature where new hires introduce themselves on the company's social timeline before they even start, and colleagues respond with a high five or a welcome message. It's one of the strongest early signals of belonging you can create, and it costs almost nothing. 3. Narrow your ICP before you touch your messaging If your win rates feel stuck, the problem might not be how you're describing your product. It might be who you're describing it to. OneTeam went from "any company with non-desk employees" to a very specific type of hospitality brand. The messaging got sharper because the audience got sharper.  4. Flip the question when thinking about AI and headcount Instead of asking "what can AI help us with?", ask "what would we do if we had 10x the team?" Then figure out which of those things can be done agentically. OneTeam is processing thousands of prospects a week with an agent that would have needed five or more SDRs before. The constraint isn't capability. It's imagination.

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.