Founding ProFound: Building Professional Representation From Zero to One
Leading design, customer success, and marketing for a zero-to-one professional representation platform.
- Zero to One
- Product Design
- AI Interfaces
- Customer Success
Anupam Dubey
Director at AKDesign
Overview
Anupam is building ProFound from zero to one, owning design across the entire customer journey while the product moves through closed beta. He works directly with early users to identify where the product's assumptions break down and iterates from there.
The Story
Anupam joined ProFound as head of customer success, also taking on design and marketing for the early-stage team. With a small founding team and a product still in development, he conceptualized the design for the mobile app, web app, onboarding flow, and every customer touchpoint from scratch.
As the product entered closed beta, he began working directly with real users signing up from the waitlist, watching how they moved through the signup and profile setup experience. In one instance, multiple users repeatedly took an unexpected path through a flow he and the team had assumed was obvious.
Rather than dismiss it as an anomaly, he treated the repetition as a signal, spoke to more users to understand the confusion, and used that pattern to rework the flow before returning it to users for another round of observation. That cycle of building, observing, and revising is now the core operating rhythm as the team opens the waitlist further and begins its go-to-market push.
Ownership Snapshot
Broad role
Head of customer success, design, and marketing at an early-stage startup.
Goal
Build a new way for professionals to represent themselves beyond LinkedIn or a resume.
Direct ownership
Owned design across the entire customer journey, from onboarding to profile setup to app experience.
Team execution
Works with a small founding team to prioritize design problems and incorporate direct feedback from closed beta users.