$5M seed round

Helping Useful raise $5M to empower continuous delivery tech teams_

Transcribe, highlight, and share important moments from customer calls. Excite and inform teammates to build products your customers will love.

Useful asked us to ideate their MVP from scratch to help fundraise their seed round. We spent the next two months brainstorming, sketching, iterating, and designing.

The founders of Useful were product managers struggling to stay on top of customer discovery with outdated, manual processes. Before setting out to build a product addressing those struggles, they interviewed hundreds of potential users to validate their assumptions.

Project background_

What is Useful, and what did they achieve before working with Semiflat?

How was Useful born?
The founders of Useful are product managers who previously worked at a big tech company. Their idea for an app was born from a shared struggle to stay on top of the customer discovery process. They realized organizing their work manually with spreadsheets provides little visibility and isn’t scalable. There had to be a better way.
Where was Useful before?
After discovering that there was no solution on the market, they took matters into their own hands. They embarked on a mission to help companies build closer customer relationships and extract insights from their conversations.

The problem_

Why did Useful need our help, and why did they reach out?

Why did Useful approach us?
Useful approached us after conducting over a hundred interviews with project managers, researchers, and designers. They knew exactly what problems their potential users faced but needed our help translating their insights into features; user flows, and a complete MVP design.

“We, we were looking for true partnership, not just great execution. Paulina, Nic, and Ewa were all of that and more. They helped bring our vision to life and were real thought partners throughout the creative process.”

Mike Ottavi-Brannon

Co-Founder

We loved the genuinely collaborative nature of the project. Useful’s founders were happy to let us lead the process and trusted our expertise throughout.

This project featured one of the most extensive discovery phases we’ve ever engaged in. On top of our discovery process we been able to leverage data from Useful’s user research to help us make the right design decisions.

Project outcome_

What did Phenom gain from working with us? Where is the project now?

Deliverables
Over two months, we’ve delivered a complete user experience and a clickable application prototype. We wanted to ensure Useful is set up for success, so we’ve also implemented a design system containing all of the components used across the interface.
Successful funding round
Useful raised a $5M financing round from Spark Capital and Unusual Ventures. The application is currently in the last stages of development, serving first users through an early-access program.

*Original designs were edited for confidentiality purposes

During our collaboration we’ve produced dozens of low and high fidelity Figma files for existing products and proof-of-value prototypes. We’ve re-designed Phenom’s design system from scratch, and built a dedicated innovation team tasked with imagining the future of hiring.

Phenom was named a leader for talent management platforms and recruiting automation software in the G2 Grid® Summer 2023 Reports, solidifying its position as the leading technology provider for hiring, developing, and retaining talent.