The Startaê Playbook
Hi there, welcome to our Playbook! Every single word here was carefully crafted with the intention to share with the team and everyone else how things are done at Startaê.
Pick a subject, and let's get started! 👋
About us
We're a product design studio focused on helping startups design better experiences and positively impact people’s lives.
What's the problem out there?
After a startup grows out of the early stage and becomes more established, it's time to improve its product and scale. To do that they usually need to:
- Improve the user experience;
- Improve the conversion and sales;
- Focus on refining the product benefits that already work from a technical point of view but need to work from a user centered point of view.
What happens is, most of the time, the company does not have time or a team with the skills to meet these necessities, and the hiring process to find someone can be expensive and time consuming.
What's Startaê doing to solve that problem?
Startaê is a team specialized on Product Design, UX/UI and Front-end development. We have design and technology skills to achieve the best experience for your product.
Ok, but what does really Startaê do? What do we sell? What is our business model?
We are a Design team on demand. During our projects there are 2+ makers from Startaê working alongside the client, in contracts that could be quarterly, monthly or weekly based.
We use the Sprint method, which consists of five steps, Discover, Make, Test, Ship and Repeat. This way, the main objectives of each project are defined with the client.
Part of our team will work directly with the client in order to improve its product and solve the problems mentioned above.
We will make design proposals, prototypes, user interviews, a/b testing with the goal of identifying the key points that can be improved.
Besides that, we also have a front-end team ready to implement these solutions.
Who are our clients? What do they look like?
We work mainly with international tech startups. They need to develop their product quickly and with minimal risk, either to go to market or to show to the investors. They are focused on the product development, experience improvement and growth.
We usually work with well-established startups because the challenges we solve are better related to the challenges startups have at this stage of their business.
We usually don't work with early stage Startups because they have a different set of challenges and have to manage their resources really well, for them it is not the time to hire an outside team.
What are the client main challenges?
They need to continue developing and improving their product and their business but face challenges to do that smoothly. That can happen in two main ways:
Peak Moments
Don't have enough people on the Design/Developer team to meet the demand on a certain period of time (eg. a product release) but it does not make sense to hire a full time person because after this moment passes that person will not have what to do.
Skill Demand
These clients usually don't have a Designer as a co-founder and don't have a structured Design or Front-end Development team.They need those abilities to continue developing the product, but the hiring process takes to long and is too expensive.
How do we add value to this client? What does working with startaê achieve?
Experienced, Responsive, Full Stack Product Design Team
We are makers with specific skills from Product Design, UX/UI to advanced Frontend. We are able to think, plan and build the products user experience. The customer will access the skills he needs, when he needs them. Other team skills: Data-driven, Prototyping, Animation, and Interaction Design
Challenge based Design
We care about your company. We're not focused only on deliverables. We want to face the problems you're facing and help solving them. We can solve strategic challenges by prototyping, testing and shipping fast.
Measurable Results
We deliver valuable and measurable results, consistent with the needs of customer. The results are consistent with the customer metrics such as, improve the conversion and improve sales.
Human Centered approach
We are focused on making decisions based on the user's needs. We will work to enhance the product benefits that already work from a technical point of view, but need to work from a user centric point of view as well.
CPO as a service
We help our customers implement a design focused culture in their startups and we can help fill and prioritise the roadmap of their product based on the needs and feedback of their customers.
The way we work
It's simple to start working with us, and it is simple end up our work time together. There is no bureaucracy or a reason to keep long contracts. The company/client has the contract to know their rights and keep counting on us. This is a good advantage because our client don't need to worry about the high turn over rate in tech companies, like employee's career, vacations, holidays, sick days or a 13 salary (one of the rights regulated to employees in Brazil).
Work with you, not for you
Our client get involved on the project's decisions. We use several collaboration tools to help us to be transparent. Moreover, they participate on the project daily meetings to share our work progress and get feedback through the project to keep both teams aligned.
And how do the projects work? What is the day to day of a project like?
We organize our activities and goals weekly, by sprints. We organize the status of all tasks in the Flow tool cards using Kanban. These are shared with the members involved in the project. We also use Slack to have an open communication channel with the team. And to keep check of the project's progress have daily sync meetings with our clients
What are the obstacles for the project happens? How does Startaê overcomes them?
We believe that one of the strongest, and at the same time most challenging factors is the possibility of working remotely. The geographical location is not a problem to work in partnership with the startup’s technology team, but we should be able to organize our schedules / time zones (if different) for our meetings (day / week).
What is your competitive advantage — what do you do better than anyone else that if you said it everyone would want it?
We are a team specialized on UX, UI and Front-End development. We take care of each small detail to design an unforgettable experience. And we do not make it alone. We work with the client's tech/design team and meet them daily. This method help us to deliver a meaningful product to our clients. Our main goal is to develop the best Data Driven UX work for our client.
What is our big claim?
We will strive to deliver results every day during the project development. The client is always a part of the process, he won't see everything only at the end.