Building PickleAI from 0 to 1
Product Designer
Dec 2020 - Nov 2021
TL;DR:
I worked closely with the founders of PickleAI (YC'21) to build a Minimum Valuable Product grounded on user research, competitor study, and market awareness. We worked together to understand user behaviors, the context, and the pain points of sales teams. My designs and prototypes were used to test and validate concepts, assumptions, and hypotheses. This product realignment process increased engagement in the app and helped PickleAI raise a seed round of $2.4 million.
The pursuit of product market fit
PickleAI records, transcribes, and analyzes your sales meetings & helps boost revenue by transforming these conversations into actionable insights.
User engagement in the app would plummet soon after onboarding an account. Users weren’t doing much other than occasionally listening to a recording or searching a meeting transcript.
The chance of churn at renewal was high even though the company had robust sales.
GOAL
Identify pain points and opportunities in the seller’s workflow where PickleAI can provide value.
Generate a long term business outcome by finding product market fit
Hitting the ground running
Data and insights gathered from review forums like G2, Trust pilot, reddit etc
I wanted to get a strong understanding of our target personas, the sales process & the current state of the sales software market.
We didn’t have the bandwidth to hire a researcher so I had to get creative. I started off by collecting competitor reviews from G2, Trust pilot, LinkedIn sales groups, reddit forums etc and grouped them by outcomes. This was well received by the stakeholders and helped get buy in for more discovery exercises.
Major players in the Revenue Operations space, their value propositions and personas
A template used by one of our research participants for taking notes in meetings
Mapping the sales process
Know thy user
These quotes from our research paint a rather vivid picture a sales rep’s life
Sometimes I have 5-6 back to back zoom calls a day
..I have multiple conversations with the same prospect before closing a deal
..so many tools...
It’s hard to stay present in the call while taking notes
.. manage relationships with multiple buyers across several deals at once
..at the end of the day I just can’t recall what was important and what wasn’t
Identifying opportunities
As meetings are at the core of a seller's job, we examined what’s important before, during & after a meeting.
Before a meeting
- When is my next meeting ?
- Prepare for the meeting
- Review any previous meetings with this prospect
During a meeting
- Focus on the conversation
- Capture important details without getting distracted
After a meeting
- Create action items quickly
- Update CRM/ Pipeline
- I don’t have time to go
through the entire recording
- Clarify customer questions,
objections etc with manager, Engineering sales, Product etc
- Share key moments
VISION
PickleAI would be like a personal assistant for sales reps, aiding them in their daily tasks.
Before a meeting
The timeline is the place to see all your meetings. You can know when any meeting is coming up without opening your calendar. The like feature on the top right shows the time to your next meeting or the time left on your ongoing meeting. You can join your Zoom call right from Pickle.
Users can prepare for upcoming meetings by opening the ‘Meeting Agenda’ page from the Timeline. You can insert agenda templates as well as add new items to the agenda. The page also shows tasks (action items) and previous meetings with this prospect. In this discovery meeting example, I want to follow up on the '2 Factor Auth' feature that was discussed in a previous meeting with this prospect. I choose the discovery template from my library and then add a new line item to remind me about the Auth feature.
During a meeting
Users can capture key moments quickly without getting distracted from the conversation. This design prioritizes on speed and ease of use so that the user can be fully present in the conversation while capturing key details. You can hit the enter/return key for dropping a timestamped pin or click an item from the meeting agenda to bookmark that part of the conversation. Notes are timestamped and have context.
After a meeting
Pickle records and creates searchable transcripts of your meetings. In the recording page, users can easily reference and interact with their notes. Clicking on the timestamp will pull up the section of the transcript when the note was taken. This provides invaluable context and helps a sales rep recall the details rep. Remember, these are people who have 5-6 meetings every day. Pickle acts as their personal knowledge assistant.
You can also add more notes, create tasks (action items) and snapshots (clips). Users can also tag teammates or start a conversation by adding a comment to a note, task or a snapshot.
Outcomes
The product realignment process increased engagement in the app and helped PickleAI raise a seed round of $2.4 million
Impact
📊 93% of all users were interacting with the product at least once a week
⚡️88% of all the meetings had at least 2 notes
📈 Meeting agenda was being used in 81% of all meetings
Customer love
“With a day full of back to back meetings, I don't think that
I would be able to keep everything straight without Pickle “
“Other note-takers and call recorders seem to be way more focused on high level analytics that don't help a seller in their day-to-day work”
“Pickle has now joined me for nearly 600 zoom calls. I'm a big fan”
