Subly / 2024 / Product Strategy
Enterprise accessibility platform pivot
Churn from 10.5% to 3%. Customer lifetime value up 220%. A strategic pivot I led as product lead and sole designer.
The Problem
A B2C model that couldn't sustain growth.
90% of customers were content creators. Churn was 10.5%, competition was high, and margins were thin. Enterprise prospects were interested but the product wasn't ready for them.
Research
Enterprise teams needed governance, not features.
Through prospect interviews and churn analysis, I identified what enterprise buyers actually cared about: structured file governance, access controls, and reliable collaboration workflows. The existing product supported none of that well enough for serious adoption.
Key findings from enterprise prospect discovery
Enterprise user personas
Strategy
From creator tool to enterprise platform.
Working with the CEO, I defined the product vision, set OKRs, and scoped the feature set that would unlock the enterprise segment. The plan: ship governance and access control within a new Enterprise plan, validate with existing prospects, then iterate.
The Solution
Two capabilities that unlocked enterprise adoption.
Research showed enterprise teams needed two things the product lacked: a way to organize content across departments, and a way to control who has access to what. I designed both as part of a new Enterprise plan.
Permission model I designed for the role-based access system
Design
One feature. Four workflows that made it work for enterprise.
Restricted-access team folders was the core capability. Permissions management, media organization, and folder configuration are all workflows within that same system, each designed to address a specific gap enterprise teams told us about.
Create restricted-access team folders
Enterprise teams manage sensitive content across departments. Without folder-level access control, managers had no way to restrict confidential materials from the wrong people.
Manage members and access permissions
Existing collaboration was all-or-nothing. The permission system gives managers granular control over who can view, edit, or manage each folder.
Move media between folders
Content moves between teams as projects evolve. The move system respects folder permissions while keeping workflows flexible.
Configure folder settings
Each folder can be configured independently, giving teams control over access defaults.
Results
First two months after launch.
What I Learned