Helping startups to scale 🦄 ✦ Driving Halo Lab 7 → 8-figures ARR & having fun ✦ Founder with Design in ❤️

I run Design & Tech Agency helping brands become TOP 1%.

✦ $530 M raised + 9-figure exits by client startups 
✦ 500+ projects delivered
✦ 99+ international awards
✦ 4.9 / 5.0 average rating on Clutch from 80+ verified reviews

This is a real impact in numbers.

—

Over the past 15 yrs I’ve been shaping digital products and brands for category‑defining companies — from NOKIA and OPERA to high‑growth SaaS and Web3 start‑ups.

My core focus is design leadership at scale: I enter as a strategic partner, craft a vision, and lead multidisciplinary teams all the way from concept to launch.

—

I specialize in:

⤷  B2B SaaS Product Design | Guiding startups and enterprise spin‑ups from 0 to 1 — turning complex tech into intuitive, emotionally resonant experiences.

⤷  High‑Performance Digital Presence | Building conversion‑focused brand websites that turn first impressions into lasting growth.

—

Have BIG idea in mind?
Contact me directly: inquiry@halo-lab.com

Artem Borysenko

But bad UX silently kills revenue, retention, user trust.

How does it look in your product:

❌ Focus on action, not on the result for the user.
❌ Complex password requirements.
❌ Two fields for the email address.
❌ Unclear question & option. 
❌ Annoying captcha.

Why does this matter for founders?
Bad UX = friction.
Friction = drop-offs.
Drop-offs = lost revenue.

Investing in clarity, consistency, and simplicity is a growth lever.

✦ Before spending more on ads, check:

→ Can users complete your core flows in seconds without thinking?
→ Are you showing users what happens next at each step?
→ Is every element earning its place, or just adding noise?

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we’ve seen micro UX cleanups increase demo bookings, reduce support tickets, and boost LTV.
Because great products don’t just work, they feel effortless.

✦

Want a quick UX audit on your product?
Drop your URL below or DM me.
We’ll send you one actionable UX fix that could move your metrics this quarter.

♻️ Share this to help others build better products.
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Founder @ Halo Lab ✦ Design & Tech Agency Helping Brands Become TOP 1%

Bad UX examples

But bad UX silently kills revenue, retention, user trust.

How does it look in your product:

❌ Inconsistent UX writing.
❌Too much content, perceived as overload.
❌Linear progress bars aren’t mobile-friendly.
❌Overloaded layout that pulls attention away.
❌ Key details are hard to spot, and the offerings feel like a maze.

Why does this matter for founders?
Bad UX = friction.
Friction = drop-offs.
Drop-offs = lost revenue.

Investing in clarity, consistency, and simplicity is a growth lever.

✦ Before spending more on ads, check:

→ Can users complete your core flows in seconds without thinking?
→ Are you showing users what happens next at each step?
→ Is every element earning its place, or just adding noise?

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we’ve seen micro UX cleanups increase demo bookings, reduce support tickets, and boost LTV.
Because great products don’t just work, they feel effortless.

✦

Want a quick UX audit on your product?
Drop your URL below or DM me.
We’ll send you one actionable UX fix that could move your metrics this quarter.

♻️ Share this to help others build better products.
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Most companies still treat a design system as a visual asset.

In reality, it behaves more like infrastructure.

It's a one-time capital investment that reduces operating costs across every product, every release, and every team.

Here’s where the real financial return shows up:

1. Reduction of duplicated efforts across teams.

When teams reinvent or create their own designs for elements like spacing, colors, states, or micro-interactions, they incur the following new costs: a new desig, codebase, QA.

With a standardized token system, there is no longer any need for this cycle to occur. 

2. Component scalability across product portfolios.

A system built for a suite compounds value:
Build once → reuse for every new feature → reuse for every new product.
This is how product orgs cut delivery time by 20–40% without adding headcount.

3. Patterns decrease cognitive load and time spent deciding.

Standardizing onboarding, dashboards, permissions, navigation, or error states will eliminate debate about core design principles among teams. Instead, team members will spend more time identifying the activities that will result in increased KPIs.

4. The cost of change decreases dramatically.

With no design system: A rebrand, accessibility update, or micro-interaction change triggers weeks of redesign and recoding..

With a design system: Update the source → every product updates automatically.

✦

A strong design system improves:

- Time to market.
- Cross-platform trust.
- Developer throughput.
- Conversion and activation.

✦

Build your design system for the next three products you launch. 
You will begin seeing returns on your investment in the early years.

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Therapy of the future: how we helped ensure a better patient experience by updating the design of the myReha digital platform.

myReha, created by nyra health, is a digital neurotherapy platform that helps stroke survivors and patients with neurological conditions continue recovery.

When the nyra health team, led by Mario Zusag, reached out, they had a clear goal: make the platform more consistent, intuitive, and scalable without disrupting what patients already loved.

The challenge?
Functionality was not consistent across devices, resulting in multiple users experiencing friction accessing the platform and seeking simplicity and reassurance.

So, we focused on what truly matters in healthcare design: clarity, confidence, and care.

1. We unified card designs for consistency.
2. Clarified CTAs for premium upgrades.
3. Improved streak and progress screens.
4. Optimized dashboards and navigation for clinicians and patients alike.

The Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner team fine-tuned the system to ensure it could scale fast and support nyra health’s insurance readiness and market expansion while staying deeply patient-centered.

Huge thanks to the nyra health team for trusting us with such meaningful work.

✦

If you’re building a product that redefines how patients heal, we’d love to help bring your vision to life.

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Case Study

That’s the moment most brands lose people.

In that split second when something just feels off.

You’ve felt it too.
Website that looks polished but somehow doesn’t feel real.
The words are there.
The design is fine.
But it doesn’t connect.

That’s a trust gap.
In those first few seconds, visitors are quietly asking:
→ “Is this for people like me?”
→ “Do they actually understand my problem?”
→ “Can I explore without being sold to?”

If your homepage doesn’t answer those fast, even a great product starts to feel risky.

The fix isn’t louder headlines or flashier visuals.

It’s smaller, more human details:
1. Clear language that sounds like something you’d actually say.
2. Honest proof that real people built this, not a faceless company.
3. Calm, confident design that gives users room to breathe.

Trust doesn’t start with “we’re the best.”
It starts with “we get you.”

♻️ Share this to help others build trust with customers.
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Homepage Psychology

You can hire a designer.

Or you can hire a design brain.

One gives you beautiful screens.
The other gives you a product that thinks.

When you hire a single designer, you get skills.
When you hire a team that works as one brain, you get experience that compounds.

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, our teams don’t work in silos.
The UX researcher sees what frustrates users.
The product designer connects it to business goals.
The UI designer turns it into clarity and trust.
The developer translates it into something fast and functional.

Each person covers a blind spot the others can’t.
And together, they don’t just design, they solve.

That’s the difference between design as a task and design as a system.
Between a pretty interface and a product that scales, converts, and feels effortless to use.

When founders realize this, everything changes:

1. They stop hiring portfolios.
2. They start hiring thinking systems - teams that anticipate problems before they appear, align design with ROI, and build products that last.

If you’re scaling your product, don’t just hire a designer.
Hire a brain that’s trained to think like your users and build like your business depends on it.

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

I audit real websites. I show what’s broken.

I explain why it doesn’t work.
And I give fixes you can apply today.

These are to help YOU avoid the same mistakes.
Every carousel = free consulting.
If you take the time to apply the lessons, your site will convert better.
Guaranteed.

In each post, you'll find:
✅ Conversion blockers you might not see.
✅ Layout tweaks that improve clarity.
✅ Real examples of what not to do.
✅ UX advice backed by data and practice.

✦

New audit just dropped.
Go through the carousel.
Steal what works.
Fix what doesn’t.

And if you want your site reviewed next:
Comment “ROAST ME” below.

Let’s build stuff that sells. Not just looks good.

♻️ Share this to help others design better webpages.
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Website roasting

Helping people move better shouldn’t feel complicated. 

That’s what makes Rytmo such a powerful idea.

When the Rytmo team first shared their vision, it was inspiring.

They were building 

- A way for people recovering from injury or training with a specialist to feel guided, not overwhelmed.

- A way for coaches and physiotherapists to finally track movement in a way that feels intuitive.

- A way for patients to feel progress, not pressure.

Our role at Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner was simple in intention but meaningful in impact:

1. Turn complex motion-tracking technology into a visual language anyone can understand.

2. Design an interface that supports both ends (the patient and the specialist ) without friction.

3. Create a unified UX that reinforces trust, motivation, and confidence with every action.

We redesigned flows so users never feel lost.
We shaped progress screens that celebrate even small wins.
We built a design system flexible enough to scale as Rytmo grows without ever losing its gentle, supportive core.

Huge thanks to the entire Rytmo team for trusting us with something this important.

Your commitment to building a better experience for patients and specialists is real, rare, and deeply needed in the industry.

✦

If you're building something meaningful in healthtech - a product that helps people feel safer, stronger, healthier - we’d love to collaborate.
Let’s create the next story together.

♻️ Share this to inspire others.
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Most founders think onboarding is just a checklist.

A few tooltips, a welcome email, maybe a product tour.

Big mistake.

First 7 days don't only determine retention, they forecast lifetime value.

The best products don't "teach" features. They create habits.

Here is what distinguishes your high-LTV onboarding from the rest.

1. Show value quickly.
Don't explain — show. 
Get your users to the "aha" moment in minutes, not days. 

2. Guide behavior, not swipes. 
Organize onboarding around your user's journey, not your feature tree. 
Day 1: Solve a problem. 
Day 2: Build context. 
Day 3+: Reinforce success and add proof.

3. Make it personal. 
A marketer ≠ an engineer ≠ a founder. 
Ask one smart question, customize the flow, and you can expect 25-50% higher activation.

4. Build habit loops. 
Cue → Simple action → Instant reward. 
“Don’t lose your progress” is always better than “Complete your profile.”

4. Measure what matters. 
Forget “onboarding completed.” 
Measure: 
• Time to first value.
• % of users hitting core action Day 1.
• Retention at Day 3 and 7.

Onboarding is not your tutorial. 
It’s behavioral design. 
And as soon as you start to treat it that way, your retention will improve, as will your revenue.

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Good interfaces are built for humans with roles, moods, habits.

And most “design rules” don’t cover that part.

Here are the non-obvious principles we now swear by:

1. Design for roles.

An operator, manager, and analyst can see “the same tool” but they are living three different narratives.

2. Tell a story.

Good UI behaves like a scene in a movie: each frame indicates, “Here’s what happens next.”

3. Simplicity isn’t minimalism.

It’s knowing what to conceal. A complex system should feel simple, even if it is not.

4. One action per screen.

Every screen should answer one question. The moment users have to pause, you’ve lost the moment.

5. Adapt, don’t copy.

There is no “best practice” for everybody.
A healthtech dashboard and a crypto wallet shouldn’t look/feel the same, and that’s a feature not a flaw.

6. Accessibility is a growth strategy.

It’s how you earn trust and give access to the people your competitors are forgetting.

The best interfaces don’t impress. They disappear.
You’re not noticing them because they are busy making you feel capable.

What was the last interface you loved using is, and why?

♻️ Share if you agree.
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I have looked through hundreds of product interfaces.

And most trust issues come from invisible details that are saying, "We did not care enough."

1. Text locked in images.
It seems nice... until you realize:
Google can't read it.
Screen readers aren't being able to get through it.
It is going to break on mobile.

✅ Fix: Always use proper, responsive HTML text overlaid on visuals. That communicates quality and care.

2. Stock photos with zero context.
If your visuals could go on any website, they shouldn't be on yours. 
People simply don't connect with "perfect smiles" and "handshakes in glass offices."
User's even notice when an image doesn't match what they are viewing.

✅ Fix: Use visuals with your product, actual people or even simple, authentic brand illustrations. Authenticity scales better than aesthetics.

3. Inconsistent spacing.
Uneven padding. A headline that is floating. Tight corners next to wide gaps. Users may never name the issue, but they feel it.
That feeling? Uncertainty. And uncertainty is lethal when it comes to conversion.

✅ Fix: Use a modular grid and consistent spacing system. Regular rhythm = subconscious trust.

What’s the smallest design detail that instantly makes you lose trust in a product?

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Guess which of our projects gained more views?

Drop A, B, C, or D in the comments.

But don’t just guess. Consider:

🔹 What details stand out? 
🔹 Which design feels more refined? 
🔹 What makes one stronger than the other?

This isn’t just a fun test.
It’s how you train your creative judgment.
The more you analyze, the faster you recognize what works.

A, B, С, or D? Drop your guess below! Let’s level up together.

The best design

Most founders struggle to explain their product in 10 sec.

And that’s usually why people forget it.

Founders jump into features, tech, or long backstories.
But the products that stick are the ones described with immediate clarity.

After helping dozens of teams simplify their pitch and homepage messaging, here are 3 frameworks that consistently work:

1️⃣ The “Movie Trailer” Line.
Hit emotion + problem + solution in one shot.

Structure:
“We help [audience] solve [problem] through [unique solution].”

Example:
 “We help remote teams brainstorm faster with an AI whiteboard that auto-organizes ideas.”

This gives people the whole story instantly.

2️⃣ The “Six-Second Test”. If you can answer these in one tight sentence, you’re done:
• Who it’s for.
• What it does.
• Why it’s different.
• What problem it solves.
• What outcome it creates.

Example:
 “For busy parents, our app plans healthy meals automatically — saving hours and reducing food waste.”

3️⃣ The “Anchor to the Familiar.”
When something is new, you need a shortcut.

Structure:
 “It’s like [familiar thing], but for [your context].”

Example:
 “It’s like Airbnb, but for campers.”
It reduces cognitive load and accelerates understanding.

If someone can’t repeat your product back to you after 10 seconds, you don’t have a messaging problem, you have a clarity problem.

What’s your 10-second product explanation?

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What founders actually need from a design partner.

Across many startup projects, one pattern is clear:

Founders don’t need resources.
They need a partner with a product mindset.
That team will give you clarity, speed, and traction.
Let’s look at the difference.

1. Designers make wireframes.
Product thinkers define outcomes.

2. Designers ship features.
Product thinkers shape systems.

3. Designers follow tasks.
Product thinkers challenge assumptions.

4. Designers deliver visuals.
Product thinkers deliver clarity.

5. Designers optimize screens.
Product thinkers optimize revenue.

A design partner shouldn’t just make your product look good.
They should make your business stronger.
Because the right partner doesn’t just design interfaces,
they help you think, operate, and grow like a product company.

✦

If you’re scaling and you need a dedicated team that thinks like your co-founder, not your vendor, let’s talk.

♻️ Share if it resonates.
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Last week, I tried to book a demo of a new tool.

Those 20 seconds told me everything.

Product UX failed here.
I scrolled twice. 
Clicked the wrong button. 
Didn’t find clues.
And gave up.

Review your product like a first-time user.

And try to fix UX issues.

1. Watch the heatmaps.
When a user pauses, backtracks, or clicks twice, that’s a red flag.
Confusion shows up in body language before it shows in analytics.

2. Check forms first.
Long fields. Missing confirmations. Mobile layouts that break.
Forms kill more conversions than bad marketing ever will.

3. Scan for “dead weight.”
Buttons nobody clicks. Copy nobody reads. Features nobody touches.
If it doesn’t guide the user forward, it’s friction.

4. Run 10-minute heuristic checks.
Navigation, readability, error states, consistency.

These basics sound boring, but they fix 80% of user frustration.
You don’t need a 3-month research sprint to uncover UX flaws.
You need sharp eyes, real users in mind, and the discipline to ask:
“Where does this experience break trust?”

♻️ Share this to help others avoid UX issues.
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 How to find UX problems

“$5K for a full app” should set off alarm bells.

I’ve seen founders get burned by quotes that sound too good to be true.

And here’s the reality: they usually are.

A credible app budget runs anywhere from $50K–$250K+, depending on scope and complexity. 

At $5K, what you’re really buying is a prototype, a landing MVP, or a template, not a production-grade product.

The hidden costs show up later:

✦ No discovery → scope creep and endless change requests.
✦ No QA → your users become the testers.
✦ No maintenance plan → apps break as OS versions and APIs update.
✦ No IP clarity → some “cheap shops” keep the repo keys, locking you in.
✦ No security → exposing you to compliance fines or breaches (the average costs $4.9M globally).

So what does a serious proposal include?

1. Discovery: user flows, integrations, edge cases.
2. Delivery plan: milestones, QA, release strategy.
3. Security & compliance baked in.
4. Ongoing ops & maintenance plan.

🚩 If a vendor quotes $5K for the whole thing, don’t think “deal.” 
Think “demo.”
The real bill will come later, in rewrites, downtime, or lost trust.

The smarter play: if budget is tight, scope a small, clear MVP with defined limits and a real path to production. 

That way, your “cheap” start doesn’t become an expensive rewrite.

♻️ Share it resonates
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The plan is clear, the prototype is exciting.

But there’s a quiet signal that something is wrong.

Because the MVP shape is wrong.
Too frequently, MVPs wind up created as demos.
They’re polished enough to show, broad enough to dazzle users, and thin enough that they can’t generate persistent, repeatable value.

Here’s the shift that will actually move the meter: An MVP is not the smallest version of your product. It is the smallest engine of recurring value.

That distinction forces you to ask:

1. What is the one capability users must succeed at?
2. What must be there so the system works without us holding it together manually?
3. What closes the feedback loop, not just opens it?

When you design an MVP from that perspective, you start developing outcomes:

✔ Clarity on measurable value.
✔ One solution for users with or without you.
✔ One core workflow that gains repetitive usage.
✔ Just enough automation to avoid operational drag.
✔ One feedback loop where you learn every time - how to scale.

This is how products gain traction early.
Build the smallest version of your value engine.
That’s the MVP you actually need.

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The MVP You Actually Need

“How much does a website cost?”

Everyone loves the safe answer: “It depends.”

But that doesn’t help when you’re budgeting, forecasting, or explaining ROI to your board.

So here’s a straightforward breakdown.

1️⃣ Landing Page.
$1,000–$5,000
A single, conversion-driven page. Perfect for launches or campaigns.
Simple structure but every word, interaction, and visual must earn its place.

2️⃣ Small Business Website.
$5,000–$15,000
Usually 4–6 pages: Home, Services, About, Contact, and maybe a Blog.
You get custom branding, clean UI, and a structure that builds trust fast.

3️⃣ eCommerce Website.
$25,000–$100,000
Product listings, filters, navigation logic, checkout systems, mobile optimization.
At this tier, UX becomes critical because every friction point = abandoned carts.

4️⃣ SaaS Marketing Website.
$75,000–$300,000
Your website becomes part of the product experience.
It must tell your story, guide users to demos, handle content, and match your product’s design language.

5️⃣ Enterprise Website.
$20,000–$100,000+
Think of it as a digital ecosystem:
Dozens of templates, multilingual support, role-based navigation, integrations, governance rules.

The real question isn’t the price.
A website is your 24/7 sales team.
If it doesn’t convert, educate, or build trust, the real cost is the revenue you’re not capturing.

So instead of asking: “How much does a website cost?”
Ask: “How much is a weak website costing me every month?”

♻️ Share if this helps someone price smarter.
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The hardest thing about building an AI product is getting people to trust what it does.

You can create a great model all you want, but as soon as users feel the slightest bit of uncertainty, they are going to ponder, hesitate, and leave.

When founders build trust into the product experience, three things happen fast.

1. Users stop second-guessing and start exploring. First session activation goes up because they understand the what and whys.

2. Every click of trust compounds itself into usage, retention, and upsell. Without trust, the best AI feature will remain unused.

3. You do not have to wait for product market fit to learn how users actually feel. Trust patterns can save you weeks of guessing, and reduce the launch chaos.

4. Transparent UX with design-based trust cuts confusion before it even reaches support. No more "I am left wondering why it said that?" tickets or bad reviews for hallucinations.

Most AI products are built for power. 
The real winners are built for confidence.

✦

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we help founders design AI products users trust enough to actually use and pay for.
If that’s the stage you’re at, let’s chat.

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Design Patterns For AI Interfaces

Every product fosters feelings.

Slack develops curiosity (you check threads). 
LinkedIn develops affirmation (you observe reactions). 
Airbnb develops trust (you reside within somebody else's space). 
Uber develops control (you follow the car, the route, the pricing).

The emotional loop your product supports, becomes the habit that makes users return - or leave.

And here is where many teams miss.
Your design doesn't just support feelings. It influences them.

✦

For every engagement, a micro-feeling is triggered - frustration, relief, pride, fear. 
These micro-feelings accumulate into a memory. 
Then memory drives retention.

Behavioral design studies confirmed that:

✦ Positive feelings (clarity, control, competence) are proven to increase engagement by 30-40%.

✦ Unresolved frustration (human error, waiting, loss of context) is the leading cause of churn within SaaS and consumer apps.

So when your UX creates anxiety (loading uncertainty, unclear steps, overwhelming dashboards) - the user has accomplished their task, but subconsciously will avoid returning.

Ways to audit emotional design in your product.

1. Avatar: the emotion you want your users to feel. (Do you want them caring, empowered, energized, etc.?) 

2. Map the emotion to each interaction. For every step: "What is this moment teaching?" 

3. Test the users' reactions, not just the usability. Record facial expressions or tone, or even keywords in a survey, after each interaction. 

4. Design feedback loop(s)- use motion, microcopy, timing, etc. to bake in positive emotions in the experience.

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Fractional CFO | Helping Founders Scale Beyond $2M ARR with Strategic Finance & OKRs | Founder @ FounderFirst

I didn’t grow up pitching VCs or building apps.

I grew up in Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria, where I didn’t speak a word of English and didn’t know anyone in tech.
But I knew how to spot opportunity, adapt quickly, and keep going.

At 17, I taught myself English. At 19, I earned a scholarship to study in the U.S. 
I came with a suitcase, less than $300, no backup plan, and did whatever scrappy thing it took to stay afloat.

Then on April 15, 2015, something clicked.
The startup world found me. And for the first time, I felt like I fit.
The chaos, the creativity, the responsibility - it was mine to carry, mine to shape.

What started as a leap into the unknown became a decade of building behind the scenes.

Since then, I’ve worked with more than 20 early- and growth-stage startups, both VC-backed and bootstrapped, across B2B SaaS, Fintech, and Edtech. 
I’ve helped scale revenue from $500K to $20M, grow teams from 10 to 200, and build finance and ops functions from scratch.
I’ve navigated pivots, layoffs, down rounds, near-bankruptcies, exits, and helped founders get to the other side.

In 2024, I launched FounderFirst to do exactly that: support founders and leadership teams with the structure, clarity, and tools they need to grow sustainably.

What I Do:
- Finance: Fractional CFO support, modeling, forecasting, and investor-ready reporting
- Strategy: OKRs and operating models that don’t die after kickoff
- Coaching: For founders and finance leads navigating the messy middle

When I’m not working with founders, you’ll find me planning my next national park hike or deep in a great book (suggestions always welcome).

Curious what's possible on your scaling journey?

Don't be a stranger. Book an intro call: https://shorturl.at/kjU5J

Mariya Valeva

At 34, she rang the Nasdaq bell, holding her toddler in her arms.
A $1.6B valuation.
Katrina Lake had just taken her company, Stitch Fix, public.

A company she built from her apartment floor, while pregnant. Twice.
She didn’t come from a family of founders.
She didn’t have a network of angels or tech mentors to call.
Her mother was a teacher who immigrated from Japan.
Her father, a transplant doctor who believed deeply in hard work and quiet sacrifice.

She grew up straddling two worlds - Japanese at home, American at school.
Learning early that success didn’t come from confidence, but discipline.

Years later, Katrina found herself in business school, surrounded by future bankers and VCs.
But she had no interest in finance.
She wanted to build something… useful.
The idea started simple:
What if busy women could get clothes picked out for them - based on data, but curated by a human?

She used SurveyMonkey to collect style preferences.
Tracked feedback in spreadsheets.
Packed boxes from her apartment floor.
And mailed them one by one.
This wasn’t a “tech company” in the traditional sense.
No SaaS margins. No app. No virality.
Just a belief that personalization - done right - could scale.

Most investors didn’t get it.
Too operational.
Too slow.
Too… retail.
And maybe, too female.
So she ran lean.
Proved retention.
And let the numbers speak.

By 2017, Stitch Fix was ready.
She took it public, and made history.
The youngest woman to IPO a tech company.
A new kind of founder.
One who didn’t “fit the mold.”
She just built her own.

A second-generation immigrant founder, raised to keep her head down -
who ended up showing the world what leadership can actually look like.
Quiet. Relentless. Human.
And maybe that’s what more of us need to see right now.

She cashed out her 401(k) to sell scrubs.
Ten years later, FIGS went public at $4.6B.

At the time, Trina Spear was “living the dream” on paper: 
• Harvard MBA 
• Wall Street pedigree 
• A high-paying job at Blackstone 
• Everything her Cuban refugee parents worked for

But success that looks good on the outside hits differently on the inside. She wanted meaning, not prestige. Then came the call that changed everything. A mutual friend connected her with Heather Hasson.

She had an idea, simple, but radical:
“What if we made scrubs people actually want to wear?”
Heather had seen her best friend, a nurse practitioner, wear the same boxy, uncomfortable uniform day in and day out.
Cheap fabric. No pockets. No pride.
No one had thought to make scrubs better.
Because no one had thought healthcare workers deserved better.
That single insight lit a fire.
Trina couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Within a few days, she booked a flight to LA.
Met Heather in person.
And said the words that would change both of their lives:
“I’m in.”

They didn’t have funding.
They didn’t have supply chains.
They didn’t even have a product line.
But they had purpose.
So they started small.
Selling scrubs out of the back of a car.
Showing up at hospitals during shift changes.
Swiping credit cards on the sidewalk.
Shipping orders from their own apartments.

Investors didn’t get it.
They said the market was “too niche.”
That doctors didn’t care about style.
That nurses wouldn’t pay for comfort.

They were wrong.
Trina and Heather didn’t just sell scrubs.
They built a community.
They made healthcare workers feel seen, celebrated, and respected.
And they did it profitably, sustainably, and on their own terms.

In 2021, FIGS became the first company led by two female founders to IPO on the NYSE.
$4.6 billion.

If you're building something the world doesn't understand yet..
This is your reminder:
You don't need permission.
You just need one "yes."
Maybe it's yours.

You don’t truly understand a business until you’ve had to clean up the mess.

It’s easy to give advice when you’re not the one dealing with the aftermath.
Easy to sound smart when your strategy lives in slides - not in systems, team dynamics, missed targets, or investor pressure.

But business isn’t built in theory.
It’s built in the uncomfortable.
The tradeoffs.
The reworks.
The silent pivots.
The “we thought this would work” moments.

That’s where real insight comes from - not from watching, but from staying.
From living the consequences of your decisions and iterating through them.

Because until you’ve felt the problem, your solution is just a guess.

*Video credits: simplyougrow insta

One viral thread. $2.4M in ARR.
Sounds like the dream, right?

You post. It hits.
Traffic, users, momentum - all from one channel.
That’s exactly how Copy. ai took off.
No “multi-channel strategy.”
Just one thing done exceptionally well: Twitter.
One thread. $2.4M. Done.

Meanwhile, most founders are still doing content gymnastics across five platforms… and wondering why nothing’s landing.
The difference?
Focus that compounds.

→ Merit Beauty skipped TikTok and podcasts. IG only. $100M+ in sales.
→ Lenny Rachitsky started with one Substack - now brings in $500K+/year and runs a top business podcast. → Glossier? One blog built a $1.8B brand.
→ Physics Wallah? YouTube only. Now $2.8B.

You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be undeniable somewhere.
I break it all down in today’s newsletter, check it out here → https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc 

🦃 Happy Thanksgiving - enjoy the pie, and the newsletter!

How do you raise $350M, hit a $2B valuation…
and still crash hard?

Remember InVision? The design darling that disappeared.
They had everything:
✔️ A killer brand
✔️ 7M+ users
✔️ A market hungry for collaboration tools
✔️ And yes, $350M in capital and a $2B valuation

So what happened?
They made the same mistake too many founders do after a Series A or B:
They scaled hype instead of substance.

Here’s where it went off the rails:

🚩 They stopped listening to the market.
While Figma doubled down on real-time collaboration and cloud-native speed, InVision clung to its old prototype model and released Studio years too late with bugs, missing features, and poor adoption.

🚩 They over-invested in sales, under-invested in product.
Massive sales teams. Endless marketing pushes.
But behind the curtain? A tool users didn’t love and that teams outgrew.

🚩 Their tech stack couldn’t scale.
Studio and Freehand weren’t just late, they were unstable.
Performance lagged. Collaboration broke. Teams jumped ship.

🚩 They misread their edge.
Instead of doubling down on what made them valuable, they spread themselves thin trying to be everything, while Figma was becoming essential to modern design workflows.

🚩 They burned money chasing growth, not resilience.
Headcount ballooned to 1,200. Revenue fell by 50% in a year.
They sold Freehand in a fire sale to Miro.
They went from market leader… to a cautionary tale.

→ Product-market fit isn’t static.
→ Capital can amplify dysfunction.
→ Growth only works if your foundations are solid.

And guess what?
You might already be heading toward an InVision moment.
It won’t look like a crash, until it does.
Ask yourself:
- Are we evolving, or just expanding?
- Do we actually know our operational weak points?
- Is our product irreplaceable, or just familiar?

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The Battle

Artem Borysenko

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