Designing a startup from 0 to acquisition - Raphael Schaad (Dive Club S6 | E3)

When it comes to design founder stories, Raphael Schaad’s is one of the best. So this episode is the first-ever telling of how Raphael designed and built Cron (which became Notion Calendar). We talk about:
- Sketching on paper vs. sketching in code
- Why shipping quality software is like camping
- How Raphael identified the MVP of the problem
- What it was like building Cron in YC during COVID
- Why you should design dialogues as first-class citizens
- Why Raphael didn’t invest much in the Cron landing page
- The differences between a design toolkit and a design system
- + a lot more lessons from a successful first-time design founder
Show notes:
- Raphael’s Twitter - x.com/raphaelschaad
- The OG Cron website - cron.com/
- Screenshot of the Cron dialogues in Figma - x.com/raphaelschaad/status/16...
Partners:
Framer: How I build websites (join.dive.club/framer-ad-podcast)
Jitter: How I animate my designs (join.dive.club/jitter-ad-podcast)
Raycast: How I do everything on my computer (join.dive.club/raycast-ad-pod...)
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club
🐦 joindiveclub
Chapters
0:00 Framer
0:32 Intro
1:30 The overview of the Cron Journey
4:19 How Raphael navigated the early idea maze
6:19 Identifying the MVP of the problem
10:13 Building the MVP of the solution
12:19 How Raphael identified the 1% of features to innovate on
17:45 Sketching in code to explore interaction patterns
23:18 How Raphael thought about Cron's GTM strategy
27:57 How Raphael approached user feedback
30:55 Why the Cron landing page is so simple
34:57 How Raphael empowered the team
42:06 Design systems vs. design toolkits
44:43 Being fast while designing with craft
45:45 The future of Notion Calendar
46:53 Previewing Raphael's Config talk
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
#productdesign #podcast #uiux

[@claudioalmeida4623]

Fire!! 🔥

[@BLMRmusic]

Nailed every point!-a very insighful dive 💡

[@joindiveclub]

Niiiiice 🙌

[@dianadia_]

Love it! Got so much knowledge from here

[@joindiveclub]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@arraysizzle]

So if he was solo during yc but didn’t code the entire thing himself, who coded it?

[@ShailPM]

hello! can I join your design group on discord please! I'm just starting out, would love to learn from watching what experts do

[@joindiveclub]

No discord yet but we share a ton of resources via email :) dive.club/deep-dives