Breakthrough B2B SaaS in double-quick time
Demonstrating what's possible when an organisation has a clear direction and goal, and sticks to the plan
The essentials
The project
Design and deliver a B2B SaaS analytics platform for commercial energy metering data, creating a new market category. Ship early to place a usable product in customers’ hands and capitalise on emerging commercial opportunities.
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My role(s)
Founding Head of Product with full ownership of product design and direction during a period of significant organisational change. Led product strategy, discovery, and design end-to-end, while working closely with engineering, commercial, and leadership teams. Managed an early-adopter programme, including onboarding, feedback loops, and expectation setting as the product evolved.
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The impact
Took the platform from first principles to a working product in the hands of early adopters within a few months, with general availability reached nine months after joining the business. Alongside product delivery, helped establish the company’s position in the market through direct customer engagement and contribution to brand positioning, including marketing activity and the launch of a new website.
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What I learned
The most significant learning was refining the balance between being opinionated and remaining flexible, particularly when deeply invested in the success of the business. Building this product sharpened my judgment as much as my craft, and reinforced the value of conscious trade-offs, fast feedback and reflection under real commercial pressure.
The problem space
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Commercial property owners lacked a clear view of how energy was being used across their estates. Without visibility into tenant-level usage patterns, it was difficult to improve efficiency, control costs, or demonstrate compliance with increasingly stringent environmental regulations.
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The core challenge was consolidating metering data and associated carbon emissions across multiple utilities and services (including electricity, gas, water, heating and cooling, and waste) and making that information intelligible in a single place.
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Existing solutions were typically constrained to individual utilities or building systems. This fragmentation prevented a holistic understanding of consumption patterns and their environmental impact, limiting both operational decision-making and long-term planning.
Very early hand-drawn sketches of the possible interface for Energy Manager
Starting from first principles
With only a basic product concept and a narrow window to secure a flagship customer, the priority was to move quickly without sacrificing clarity. That required establishing a small number of strong, shared principles to guide decisions under pressure.
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In practice, this meant:
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Defining a coherent product canvas grounded in a clearly researched Ideal Customer Profile, rather than a broad or speculative market.
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Identifying a true MVP and committing to it, with explicit buy-in from business owners.
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Being equally clear about what we were not building, to avoid dilution and scope creep.
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Holding a high degree of certainty in the short term while designing for flexibility over time; strong opinions, weakly held.
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Exposing early plans, designs, and working software to a trusted group of potential users. Securing this access, and maintaining trust through rapid iteration and clear communication, was critical.
Where we are now
Energy Manager has begun to establish a strong reputation in the market. Following a recent demo, one attendee described it as “the best product I’ve ever seen in this space”, a response that reflects both the product’s maturity and its clarity of purpose.
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The platform brings together previously disparate data sets and presents them through a navigation structure designed around users’ day-to-day tasks. Rather than relying on generic dashboards, it guides users toward understanding, comparison, and action.
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Crucially, Energy Manager was built on solid software design and engineering foundations from the outset. Instead of reacting solely to the need to export or visualise metering data, the product takes a considered view of how that data is interpreted and used, enabling more meaningful and sustained decision-making.
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Outcomes, and what's next
The timely delivery of early iterations of Energy Manager enabled the business to secure contracts with flagship customers, raising its profile and providing a strong foundation for continued growth.
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This early traction supports several clear next steps:
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Expanding the scope of Energy Manager with analytics capabilities that encourage more data-driven approaches to commercial energy management.
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Establishing the product as best-in-class within the commercial energy management market.
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Growing the brand and the business, including exploring longer-term investment opportunities.
Reflections
A great deal went well on this project, and those outcomes are reflected above. That said, delivering at speed inevitably involved challenges and conscious trade-offs.
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With more time, I would have preferred deeper market engagement before committing to the initial product shape. While no major missteps were made, there were points where we needed to reassess and adapt quickly as new information emerged.
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Given the opportunity to do this again, I would lean more heavily on low-fidelity, scrappy prototypes - particularly those generated using AI - to test assumptions and gather user feedback even earlier.
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We made deliberate decisions to prioritise momentum over completeness. This resulted in some technical and design debt, which was identified, assessed, and consciously accepted. While one risk did materialise, it was manageable and rapidly resolved. We had the space to do this because of the good will we'd generated by the way we operated early on.
Figma Make has been invaluable in recent months in getting early hands on UX flows without having to create full prototypes; more of this earlier on would have been even more beneficial