Case Study: ShowStop AI

ShowStop was an AI-powered creative platform with real, early traction. Their cold outreach was achieving a 25% response rate: marketers immediately understood the problem they were solving and why it mattered. Their V1 was live with paying customers. But the founding team recognized a gap between what they'd built and what they needed to build: a more streamlined V2 experience capable of driving the daily active user retention they were aiming for.

With a clear vision for V2 and limited runway, they faced the same decision every early-stage team faces: Build on conviction, or validate first? They chose to validate. That's where I came in.

I served as lead designer and sprint facilitator for the engagement, embedded with the ShowStop founding team throughout. I led all discovery and research, facilitated alignment workshops, designed the V2 experience direction, and built all prototypes used in customer validation sessions, including fully functional, code-based prototypes built with Claude and Cursor that the engineering team later confirmed were production-ready.