Designed an all-in-one CRM tailored for business of one, securing a $10M seed round led by Andrew Chen from a16z.
Starting point
Practice started as a simple CRM to launch and manage businesses of one. Summer 2020, we pivoted from Tandem as our initial customers increasingly embraced remote work, creating a demand for a comprehensive all-in-one back-office solution.
Originally conceived as a mobile app with a focus on client relations, we identified the need for a desktop experience that placed emphasis on payment collection and calendar management. To facilitate this transition, we expanded our team by integrating 3 web engineers.
Product design vision
Observing our customers' creative yet risky approaches to managing their businesses using a patchwork of interconnected tools via Zaps was enlightening. This served as our daily motivation to build a straightforward, all-in-one CRM solution.
With hundreds Calendly and Freshbook copycats, we realized most customers would require only a fraction of the features these platforms offered. Practice’s strength lies in its simplicity and deliberate feature limitations, coupled with the ability to interconnect these features.
Early product market fit
Early 2021, the service-based entrepreneurship market felt massive and underserved. With over 1,000 customers on our waitlist, and a remarkable 72% of all onboarded customers remaining active, we sensed an early product-market fit.
Securing a seed round of $10M led by Andrew Chen from a16z was a pivotal moment : We doubled our team to 17 members, including 2 designers and 10 engineers.
Customers, our backlog copilots
Upon onboarding our initial ~700 customers through video calls, we fostered a supportive and inclusive environment for feedback.
A simple feedback button in the sidebar became an invaluable window into our users’ minds. Daily messages poured in, forming the foundation of our product backlog.
This process allow us to prototype and validate solutions with our customer in a matter of days.
To this day, we've received 3800+ requests, encompassing 1100+ features. Notably, 105 features were requested by more than 10 customers.
Time for exposure
With a 70% retention rate by the third month, we decided to open Practice for self-signup. Despite certain rough corners and feature limitations, we believed the product was ready for broader unmoderated heat. With self-serve, 63% of users engaged in multiple sessions on day 0, making it the most active day during the trial. Interestingly, 56% of those who engaged on day 0 converted to customers post-trial, while 71% of those who didn't engage on day 0 did not convert.
This highlights an opportunity and emphasizes the importance of the onboarding in the user activation journey.
Focus on activation
We formed a 3-members pods dedicated to growth and activation. In addition to refining our sign-in experience, we experimented with reverse trials and streamlined content migration during onboarding.
We observed a rise in sign-up completions from 7% to 17%, despite a stable credit-card screen drop rate of around 50%. Additionally, the trial win rate increased from 40% to 51%.
2023 direction
Our mission always center around supporting solopreneurs in scaling their activity. As their business grow, a stream of feature requests emerge due to needs such as managing contractors and securing deals with corporations.
In response, we introduced two new tiers in 2023. The Pro tier offers more customization, white-label and complex workflows. The Teams tier, our latest focus, gives your team the tools to schedule, track sessions, and manage clients — in real-time.
Both of these tiers have significantly increased our avg MRR per customer and retention rate.
Today, Practice operates as a fully functional startup with a team of 12 employees focus on a more B2B service. I'm still part of Practice as a fractional Head of Design.
Designed an all-in-one CRM tailored for business of one, securing a $10M seed round led by Andrew Chen from a16z.
Founding designer. 2020
Product strategy. Product design. User research. Branding.
With over 1,000 customers on our waitlist, and a remarkable 72% of all onboarded customers remaining active, we anticipated an early product-market fit and had the chance to secure a seed round of $10M led by Andrew Chen from a16z.
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"Arnaud is incredibly valuable to a founder and early team. He commits for the long haul, turning a vision into a cohesive first product you can be proud of. His ability to both see the business case and the user persona is very valuable to a small team trying to prove something out. You can trust him to act independently and make the right decisions even if there is only limited information."