Turning early-stage ambiguity into product priorities and partnership execution.
Vanity Pass was an early-stage B2B2C start-up where product direction, customer positioning and partnership strategy were all still forming. As Employee #2, I worked across product research, GTM strategy, partnerships, customer feedback, competitor analysis, investor preparation and operating reporting — helping turn scattered signals into decisions the team could act on.
The business problem
High ambition, limited structure. Product feedback was scattered across customer conversations, Product Hunt comments and internal discussion. GTM direction lacked evidence on segments, competitors and pricing. Partnership activity lived in messages and memory rather than a shared system. And leadership needed clearer, decision-ready material for investor and strategic conversations.
What the research covered
Four connected workstreams
Understanding the market and the user
Analysed 20+ competitors across positioning, pricing and features, and conducted 50+ customer interviews to find where value felt unclear or expectations went unmet.
Turning signals into recommendations
Reviewed Product Hunt feedback alongside interview themes and translated findings into segment, positioning and MVP-prioritisation recommendations for leadership.
Bringing discipline to the pipeline
Built Excel-based partnership pipeline reporting and supported strategic partnership work, including Uber — moving activity out of messages and into a shared, trackable system.
Making early-stage information decision-ready
Prepared pitch materials and synthesised commercial data for investor and strategic stakeholder meetings, including with American Express.
Direct ownership vs. team outcome
Customer interviews, competitor analysis, Product Hunt feedback synthesis, pipeline tracker creation, stakeholder communication, pitch material preparation, and recommendations to leadership.
The Uber partnership, the overall product strategy, and shipped MVP features were team results. My part was identifying opportunities, framing value, and structuring the information that fed those decisions.
Before → intervention → outcome
From scattered updates to a pipeline tracker
Partnership progress can't live only in DMs and memory. I built an Excel-based pipeline tracker so partner status, blockers and next actions were visible in one place instead of chased individually.
The structure below is illustrative of the tracker's fields, not a reproduction of confidential pipeline data — real partner names, terms and notes are not shown.
From raw signal to leadership decision
Evidence & process layer
Interview theme synthesis
Grouped raw customer feedback into repeated themes around value clarity, onboarding and feature gaps, rather than reacting to individual comments.
Competitor positioning matrix
Compared audience, pricing model, features and messaging across the category to sharpen where Vanity Pass could differentiate.
Partnership pipeline tracker
Replaced scattered partner updates with a single Excel-based tracker leadership could check without chasing anyone.
Note: Original documents are not shown because they may contain confidential partner, investor or company data. This section summarises the workflow artefacts rather than exposing private material.
"My Vanity Pass achievement was taking the messy early-stage middle — customer feedback, competitor research, product priorities and partnership follow-ups — and turning it into clearer decisions and a more disciplined operating rhythm."
As Employee #2, the work spanned 20+ competitor analyses, 50+ customer interviews, 5+ MVP iterations influenced and 5+ stakeholder meetings supported. Framed honestly: my contribution was structuring information for decisions — not sole ownership of every outcome, including the Uber partnership.
I can operate across functions in an ambiguous, resource-limited environment — turning scattered customer, market and partnership signals into structured recommendations leadership could actually act on.
This project mirrors core consulting habits: diagnosing an ambiguous commercial problem, structuring fragmented information into evidence, and communicating findings in a decision-ready format for senior stakeholders — under real time and resource constraints.