From founder-built MVP to $8M SaaS—scaled design systems, structure, and clarity for one million users.
How did we help:
24:1 UX ROI
65% Product Velocity
+20% Conversion Lift
SaaS Growth
UX Infrastructure
Design Systems
Design Systems
Product UX
Solo DesignOps
Webflow Migration
Industry
Headquarters
Baltimore, MD
Founded
2010
Company Size
Key Markets
1M+ users globally
Growth Stage
ARR $8M by 2023
Website
Overview
TeamGantt is a project management platform used by over one million remote teams and SMBs. I joined as the founding Head of UX & Design Systems to transform a WordPress-built MVP into a scalable SaaS product. My work focused on building systems, not screens — creating a UX foundation that could support $8M in ARR and sustainable growth.
Vision & Context
The founders built TeamGantt to simplify complex project planning for non-PMs. The goal wasn’t to reinvent Gantt charts—it was to make them human. The challenge: scaling that clarity without losing simplicity.
Understanding the Problem
When I joined, the product’s success had outgrown its structure.
Design was inconsistent. Engineering was duplicating work. The onboarding flow that worked for 1,000 users collapsed under the weight of 100,000.
I approached it like a systems problem — not “what do we redesign?” but “why are these friction points happening?”
I started by mapping the bottlenecks between design and development:
• Where were engineers rebuilding components that already existed?
• Why were customers churning after sign-up?
• What was the hidden cost of design debt?
Early data analysis and customer feedback showed that onboarding confusion and slow task workflows were the top churn drivers. These insights grounded every subsequent UX decision.
Vision & Context
The founders built TeamGantt to simplify complex project planning for non-PMs. The goal wasn’t to reinvent Gantt charts—it was to make them human. The challenge: scaling that clarity without losing simplicity.
Strategic Approach
My first principle: structure scales, aesthetics don’t.
I built the initial design system to solve two problems at once — consistency for users, and efficiency for developers. Instead of a static UI kit, I created a living framework tied directly to product patterns and engineering logic.
Design thinking guided the system architecture:
Define clarity: Simplify task hierarchies and remove unnecessary choices.
Design for iteration: Every component must evolve without breaking downstream dependencies.
Prove value early: Track reuse, velocity, and performance from day one.
Close the feedback loop: Align design validation with engineering sprints.
As adoption grew, the system became a shared language between design, product, and code — measurable proof that alignment saves time.
System Architecture Thinking
The system was designed like infrastructure. Every component was data-driven, versioned, and reusable across contexts. The design system became both blueprint and benchmark—bridging product, marketing, and engineering.
Key Initiatives
Rebuilt core UX for task planning and scheduling, informed by usage analytics and user interviews.
Migrated the marketing site to Webflow for speed and conversion testing.
Designed modular components to standardize onboarding and reduce support requests.
Introduced UX performance dashboards tracking velocity, reuse, and adoption metrics.
Established pre-dev validation cycles to prevent rework and improve collaboration.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Alignment across teams became a core UX discipline. Design rituals integrated directly into sprint cycles, ensuring validation before build. Product reviews evolved into performance reviews for the system itself.
Financial Impact & Business Enablement
Beyond efficiency, design drove measurable business outcomes. Reduced rework cut annual costs by $150K+, while velocity gains opened bandwidth for new features that directly fueled ARR growth.
Key Results
ARR Growth: $1.7M → $8M (2016–2023)
User Growth: +140% globally
Conversion Lift: +20% through performance and flow optimization
Dev Efficiency: 65% faster delivery from reusable systems
Revenue Impact: $1.7M+ in UX-attributed growth
ROI: 24:1 return on UX investment
Annual cost savings: $150K+ through reduced design debt and rework
Time-to-launch: Cut feature delivery cycles from weeks to days
The Impact
TeamGantt reshaped how teams planned, tracked, and delivered work. What started as a simple Gantt chart tool became an intuitive visual planning platform for over one million users. By grounding design in clarity and consistency, teams could spend less time wrestling with tools and more time collaborating.
The work wasn’t about adding features—it was about architecting a system that could grow with the business. Every design choice improved trust, predictability, and performance at scale.
The result was a foundation of velocity: fewer bottlenecks, cleaner handoffs, and measurable growth in adoption, conversion, and revenue. Design became the quiet infrastructure that powered the company’s climb from startup to multimillion-dollar SaaS.
Reflection: Design as Infrastructure
TeamGantt’s evolution proved that design systems aren’t aesthetic—they’re economic. When clarity compounds, velocity follows. The result: a platform that scales not through headcount, but through design maturity.
Role
Founding Head of UX & Design Systems. Partnered directly with the Co-Founder and Engineering leadership to build TeamGantt’s UX foundation from the ground up.
Led the redesign of product, marketing, and onboarding systems, transforming a WordPress MVP into a scalable SaaS platform.
Delivered the company’s design system, accelerated velocity by 65%, and supported ARR growth from $1.7M to $8M while reaching over one million global users.
Solo Design Leadership
TeamGantt’s growth was fueled by a single design seat driving product clarity, consistency, and measurable scale. Solo design leadership in this context meant owning the full design stack—strategy, research, systems, and execution—while aligning tightly with engineering and product to move fast without breaking coherence.
Operating as both architect and advocate, design became the connective tissue across product and marketing. The approach emphasized repeatable logic over subjective taste, allowing one designer to support a platform used by over one million people and sustain an $8M ARR operation.
Solo design leadership demanded systems thinking—knowing that every button, token, and motion rule represented time saved for the company and velocity gained for the team. Through deep collaboration with engineering, design became a profit center: a multiplier of development efficiency, not a cost line.
By the time the platform scaled, design had evolved into infrastructure—reducing engineering debt, accelerating feature delivery, and directly contributing to recurring revenue growth. It wasn’t design for aesthetics. It was design as leverage.
