Head of Product · Education Marketplace
The challenge
Users found courses and left — no retention, no registration, poor lead quality
What I did
Led the company's first ever mobile app from 0→1
Result
70,000 new accounts and +300% returning users within the first year
"70,000 new student accounts and a 300% increase in returning users — all within the first year."
Problem
The platform had a retention problem disguised as an engagement problem. Users would arrive, find a course, and leave — never to return. This was damaging the quality of referrals sent to university partners (the core revenue source), because universities paying for leads want engaged, informed applicants — not one-and-done visitors. Without registration, there was also no way to track user behaviour meaningfully or pass valuable insights back to partners.
Approach
I led everything hands-on — from making the internal case for a mobile-first product to owning the vision, strategy, and delivery. This was the company's first ever mobile app, which brought significant organisational challenges alongside the usual product ones.
Scope was the biggest risk. Without clear boundaries the project was heading towards a delayed launch — I stepped in, made the hard prioritisation calls, and cut what wasn't truly MVP. That decisiveness is what kept delivery on track and got the app shipped on time across both iOS and Android.
A key strategic decision was making registration central to the experience — giving us the behavioural data to track user journeys and surface meaningful insights for university partners for the first time.
No user testing before launch meant post-launch fixes came at the cost of roadmap reprioritisation. Test with real users before you ship, even if scrappy.