Making the Case for a Desktop Product at a Mobile-First Startup
Surfaced a behavioral insight from user data and interviews, then built the case to shift a mobile-first team toward a desktop build.
Aishwarya Kandukuri
Founding Member at Stealth AI Startup
From their time as
Founding Member
Stealth AI Startup • 2025
Overview
Aishwarya was working at a stealth consumer AI startup where the entire product was built for mobile. One of the core features required users to upload a job description, a file that people typically store on their laptops, not their phones.
The Story
Aishwarya was working at a stealth consumer AI startup where the entire product was built for mobile. One of the core features required users to upload a job description, a file that people typically store on their laptops, not their phones.
She noticed the friction in the usage pattern and formed a hypothesis: certain workflows were structurally better suited to desktop, regardless of how the mobile product was designed. The assumption inside the team was that users would adapt to mobile the way they did for everything else.
To test the hypothesis, she combined two streams of evidence. She pulled behavioral data showing where users were dropping off or working around the mobile constraint. She also ran user interviews that confirmed a consistent pattern: people preferred their laptops for serious, document-heavy work.
Presenting the finding was not a single conversation. The team's default was mobile-first, and the case for a desktop product required alignment across stakeholders who had not seen the need. She iterated on how she framed the proposal as new data came in, addressing each layer of resistance with updated evidence.
The team is now building the desktop product.