Catch the trade before it’s permanent
We catch decisions that trade off long-term product health for short-term speed, before the trade off becomes irreversible.
Full-stack product designOur framework
Rescuing you from the horror of a debt-heavy product and an overworked team.
If you have been running a product for over a year, you know the grind. Features keep stacking up, designers redo screens they finished months ago and engineers brace for one more thing to break. The cause is three kinds of debt building up at once: design, technical and cultural.
Over a decade of experience working across industries and complexities has enabled us to formulate a framework that can be adapted to all products at various stages in their life cycle.
The terrible trio
You’re probably living with all three.
Most teams don’t call it debt. They call it a bad quarter, a difficult release, or a team that needs a reset. Here’s a closer look at the symptoms of each.
Why they compound
It isn’t 3 separate problems. It’s one feedback loop.
01
Rushed tech decisions lead to poor and compromised user experience.
02
Consistently bad experience leads to design redo requests, adding to tech debt.
03
All the extra work leads to a lazy roadmap, a frustrated founder and an overworked team.
Fix one side on its own and the other two pull it straight back. That’s why the loop has to be broken at all three points at once.
How the triangle forms and continues in a loop
We’ve watched this pattern play out again and again. Let’s start from how it all begins.
- Design debt
- Technical debt
- Cultural debt
- Before funding
-
01The founder sets the vision
The founder knows what the product should be and explains it to the first people on the team. Nothing has been tested yet against flows, screens or system structure.
Debt added:None
-
02A technical hire builds the first version
An engineer or technical co-founder is asked to get something working fast. With no designer yet, data structure, navigation and feature order follow whatever is quickest to build.
Debt added:+ Design
-
03Friends and advisors try it
The core functionality holds up and confirms the direction. The feedback covers whether it works, so nobody examines how the flows are structured.
Debt added:None, and the existing debt goes unnoticed
-
04The first designer joins
They find that the flows depend on how the product was built, so every design fix means changing code that already exists.
Debt added:+ Technical
-
05Design and engineering prepare the investor version
They agree on a version that fits the fundraising timeline. Design bends to what the build supports, and engineering builds on what’s there. Both sets of compromises stay in the product.
Debt added:+ Design+ Technical
- After the seed round
-
06A product manager joins and reviews the product
The first product manager goes through it in detail and reports to the founder. Engineering hears that the flows have to change, and design hears that finished work needs redoing. The debt is now visible, and the team starts debating on whose responsibility that is.
Debt added:+ Cultural
-
07Rework runs alongside the roadmap
Design reworks old flows while delivering new roadmap items, and engineering rebuilds features it has already shipped. And this has to go alongside everything new that needs building, because the business is answerable to investors. And maybe the founder brings in new people on the team to clean the mess.
Debt added:+ Design+ Technical+ Cultural
-
08Pressure builds on the team
The founder asks for more output. Burnout sets in, and decisions made under pressure add to the defects and disagreements already on the table. The new hires end up getting confused and directionless.
Debt added:+ Cultural
-
↻ Back to stage 07
From here the team returns to stage 7 with less time and less trust than before, and it goes round again until someone interrupts it.
Bars show illustrative debt building up at each stage.
Recognise the loop?
If that’s your company, a call with us is where we place you on this timeline and work out which debts are behind the slowdown.
Breaking the loop
The Debt Triangle Shrinking Framework.
The loop doesn’t slow down on its own. Breaking it takes decisions, sometimes very difficult ones. Shrinking the triangle means intervening at design, culture and technology directly, instead of fixing one and hoping the relief cascades over into the other two.
Check the stack against the vision
With partner developers, we assess the tech stack and backlog against the actual roadmap and vision, and catch misalignments before they calcify.
Product managementRebuild how the team works
We analyse team structure and hiring, correct misplaced expectations and toxic patterns, and help build a culture that lifts both productivity and morale.
LeadershipTwo modalities of the framework
Prevent it early. Cure it when it’s here.
Preventive
If your product is still early
Best for founders at the 0 to 1, pre-series funding stage.
We strategise with the core team to turn the product vision into scope, flows and system structure before the first version is built.
- Design and engineering decisions are made in alignment and checked against each other. The product structure and the user flows stay aligned as the first version takes shape.
- Team structure, hiring order and delivery expectations are set while the team is small. Roles, ownership and handovers are defined before a funding round raises the pace of work.
Curative
If the debt is already slowing you down
Best for post-Series A startups and enterprises.
We work with you in an advisory role to find where the debt sits, how the three sides have affected each other, and what has to change.
- An audit is made across design, technology and culture. We review the product, the codebase (with partner developers) and the way the team works, then map an action plan.
- We decide on what to stop, add, repair or remove. Each part of the product is given an action based on the audit. In some cases that means retiring a feature set or a whole function.
What is it worth
Debt is paid for again and again.
The cost of carrying it
Accrued product debt is paid for repeatedly. A team pays once when the work is first done and again when it’s redone and again and again.
- Done
- Redone
- Redone again
- And again…
Every week spent redoing finished work is a week of time, money and trust flushed down the drain.
When the debt comes down
That time goes back into the roadmap. Features reach customers sooner, new hires join a product that has clarity and purpose and the founder’s attention goes to customers and growth.
The product also becomes easier to use and quicker to grow, which keeps paying off in form of happy customers and an enthusiastic team.
How easy it is to start
One zero-obligation, 30-minute conversation.
If you came this far, and relate to what you read above, book a zero-obligation 30-minute conversation with us.
- You
Describe where the product stands: team size and roles, funding stage, and what has slowed down.
- We
Place you on the timeline above and look at which of the three debts are present and how they connect.
- You leave
With a view on where to look first. If working together makes sense, we talk about how. If it doesn’t, you still know where to look.
Who it’s for: the call is most useful for founders, CEOs and product leaders at startups and enterprises with a product in market that is getting stuck due to confused customers or difficult edge cases that are tough to implement in your current architecture.