[ WORK · TEARDOWNS · THINKING ]

Selected work

Three kinds of work, in one place: products I shipped, teardowns of products I actually use, and thinking exercises on companies I don't work for.

Teardowns

Deep dives into a live product, taken apart to find the one decision behind the friction.

TeardownStartupWispr Flow/Jun 2026/7 min read

Never Rewrite a Single Word

An outside-in teardown of Wispr Flow, the voice dictation tool whose whole brand is one promise: you never rewrite a word. The transcription is best-in-class, but the promise breaks three ways after it. Words vanish in the last six inches to the cursor, the AI cleanup quietly rewrites your meaning, and accuracy decays right after you pay. Traces the 4.8-versus-2.7 ratings split to trust draining out once the trial ends, then stages a positioning fix from parts Wispr already shipped but buried in troubleshooting.

Product TeardownVoice / AI DictationTrustRetentionPositioning

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4.8 → 2.7App Store vs Trustpilot · the trust gap

TeardownStartupDitto/Jun 2026/7 min read

Signed Up, Never Matched

An outside-in teardown of Ditto, the campus app that texts you one ready-to-go date a week. Ditto flaunts 143,670 signups while its own users across r/UCSD and r/SJSU keep saying the same thing: they signed up and never got matched. Traces the real leak to match liquidity (not the match-to-date gap everyone watches), shows how a flyer-driven growth engine makes it worse, and stages a referral-gated fix that builds the campus pool instead of inflating the counter.

Product TeardownConsumer / DatingMarketplace LiquidityGrowth LoopsTrust

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143,670Signed up · how many matched?

TeardownWaymo/Jun 2026/9 min read

Pickup Unreachable

A field study of a single Waymo error screen. Booking from inside a gated Tempe complex returns a Pickup Unreachable error and a blank search box, even though dragging the pin 373 ft to the gate books instantly. Traces the failure to three handling gaps (it dead-ends, never explains, never learns), then scopes an app-layer fix Waymo already holds the patents for, plus the wait-versus-walk math and a case for route honesty.

Product TeardownRider ExperienceRobotaxisError StatesApp Design

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373 ftFrom my pin to a spot the app accepts

TeardownWaymo/Jun 2026/12 min read

Stranded by Design

A rider-experience teardown built from one real Waymo ride across Phoenix on a 106° day, one twelve-minute support call, and everything the public record revealed after. Two of Waymo's most common complaints (long routes and long re-pickup waits) trace to a single choice: optimize for fleet utilization over rider time. Three buildable concepts (Hold My Ride, Heat-Aware Pickups, Route Honesty) with the dispatch, pricing, and business case behind each.

Product TeardownRider ExperienceRobotaxisDispatch & PricingCompetitive Analysis

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20 minWait, on a 106° Phoenix curb

TeardownStartupCursor (Anysphere)/Mar 2026/9 min read

The $29B Fork

How four MIT students forked VS Code, grew with almost no traditional marketing, and built what may be the fastest-growing SaaS product ever, while every model provider simultaneously funds them and competes with them.

Product TeardownSaaSAI CodingCompetitive AnalysisUnit Economics

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$2BAnnualized Revenue

TeardownSpotify/Mar 2026/7 min read

Listening Into Loyalty

How Spotify turned a music player into a growth machine. A teardown of Discover Weekly and Wrapped: the two features that drive retention and acquisition through algorithmic personalization and viral data storytelling.

Product TeardownGrowth LoopsRecommendation SystemsViral MechanicsRetention

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751MMonthly Active Users

Shipped

Products I designed, built, and launched.

ShippedFrictionLens/Mar 2026/6 min read

The Free AI Tool That Earns It

A full-stack AI review intelligence tool live at frictionlens.net. Owned product and design across the marketing site, dashboard, and shareable Vibe Report pages on Next.js, TypeScript, Supabase, Google Gemini, and Upstash Redis. Cost-aware 3-tier classifier routes ~80% of reviews through keyword rules so the freemium tier stays free. BYOK with AES-256-GCM lets power users run unlimited analyses on their own key.

Full-StackAINext.jsCost EngineeringBrand & Landing Page

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$0Forever tier · 3 classifier tiers · 4 review sources

ShippedStartupAatram/Mar 2026/6 min read

Start Starting

Co-led product on a 3-person team. Led the V2 anti-interruption rewrite after 16 archetype interviews showed our own notifications were pulling avoidance-prone users out of focus. Owned UI, brand voice, an 18-component design system, the logo drawn as 80 SwiftUI Canvas stroke segments, and aatram.com end-to-end. Drove a 22-finding pre-submission audit through App Review.

0-to-1iOSApple Foundation ModelsBrand & DesignAnti-Interruption

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5.0★App Store launch rating · 158 commits

ShippedStartupIKT India/Aug 2024/7 min read

Margins, Vendors, and a Marketplace That Worked

Seed-stage curated B2B marketplace for handloom and sustainable clothing brands across 15 Indian states. Owned vendor-side product with a four-engineer team as the company's first dedicated PM. Designed and ran a concurrent A/B test on 50 SKUs with price floors against a matched control, scaled the winner to 500+ SKUs, lifted gross margin from 25% to 40%, and doubled monthly GMV. Cut seller onboarding from 3 days to 6 hours and grew the vendor base 20 → 75+.

B2B MarketplaceA/B TestingSQLPricing StrategyVendor Growth

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3.75xVendor growth · 2x GMV · 25→40% margin

Thinking exercises

Full PM process — research, framework, PRD — applied to a company I don’t work for.

Thinking exerciseFigma/Mar 2026/8 min read

Rebuilding Trust After UI3

How a major redesign and AI data-sharing controversy tested trust with Figma's power users, and a PM framework for earning it back through progressive migration and transparent AI.

Trust RecoveryCIRCLESPRDRICE ScoringWireframes

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$1.06BFY2025 Revenue

Thinking exerciseNotion/Mar 2026/12 min read

Notion's $600M Paradox

How AI Agents Could Solve the Onboarding Problem That Templates Never Fixed. After interviewing 10 Notion users and analyzing 10,000+ reviews, one pattern dominated: the flexibility that makes Notion powerful makes it overwhelming.

AARRR FunnelUser InterviewsRICE ScoringWireframesARR Modeling

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~$600MEst. ARR

Thinking exerciseSonos/Mar 2026/8 min read

When the Music Stopped

How Sonos shipped a major app rewrite that removed core features, broke accessibility, and cost the CEO his job. A PM framework for how the migration should have been managed.

CIRCLESPRDSafe MigrationAccessibilityRICE Scoring

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~$500MMarket Cap Lost

Thinking exerciseTikTok Shop/Mar 2026/8 min read

Redesigning Trust in Social Commerce

Redesigning trust, discovery & purchase confidence in the world's fastest-growing social commerce platform. CIRCLES framework, wireframes, and a full PRD for a Trust Layer.

CIRCLESSocial CommercePRDWireframesTrust Design

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~$64BGMV 2025 Est.

Thinking exerciseDuolingo/Mar 2026/10 min read

Breaking the B1 Wall

52 million daily users. $1 billion in revenue. A learning ceiling nobody's fixing. A product strategy using the CIRCLES framework and PRD to address Duolingo's intermediate plateau.

CIRCLESPRDUX ResearchRICE ScoringWireframes

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52.7MDaily Active Users

Thinking exerciseApple/Mar 2026/10 min read

When Glass Cracked

How Apple's most ambitious redesign since iOS 7 broke accessibility for millions, and what a better path forward looks like. A UX case study analyzing WCAG failures, heuristic violations, and solution design.

UX ResearchAccessibilityWCAG 2.2Heuristic EvaluationRICE

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1.5:1Contrast Measured

Thinking exerciseRivian/Mar 2026/7 min read

Rivian's Broken Handshake

How phone key failure rates as high as 70% threaten a $5.8B joint venture, and a PM framework for rebuilding trust through feedback, state communication, and failure recovery improvements.

CIRCLESPRDRICE ScoringUX WireframesBLE/UWB

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Up to 70%Failure Rate

Thinking exerciseASU · Research/Nov 2025/6 min read

Innovation Index Analysis

A Python analysis on a 1,862-record innovation dataset (130 countries, 13 years, merged from WIPO, World Bank, and UNESCO). t-tests and ANOVA surfaced 15 non-G20 countries scoring above the G20 average, and a regression found education explains only 7.3% of innovation variance, a counter-finding to the dominant policy narrative.

PythonStatistical AnalysisANOVARegressionPolicy

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1,862Records · 130 countries · 13 years

That's the work.

Products I shipped, teardowns of things I use, and thinking on companies I don't work for. If a problem like these is on your desk, I'd like to hear about it.

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