0 to Sticky: Starting & Scaling an AI Workspace for Knowledge Workers
Skipper is an AI-powered productivity web app that organizes your browser tabs for you.
Designed for knowledge workers, rooted in CMU research & backed by Menlo Ventures.
Overview
Problem
Knowledge workers lose almost 3 hours a day due to distractions caused by having too many browser tabs open.
Solution
An AI-powered self-organizing workspace that safely puts away, organizes, and helps quickly reopen stale tabs.
Impact
5,000
Weekly active users in 10 months
Average 50%
Week 8 retention in newest cohorts
3.2%
Paid conversion*
*Top quartile of AI products is at 3.9% while median is 1.8%
Role
Head of Design (sole designer)
Co-founder
Responsibilities
Design Strategy
UX/UI & Interaction Design
User Research
Prototyping & Testing
Establishing & Scaling Design System
Facilitating Collaboration
Fundraising
Team
2 engineers + 1 PM
Timeline
10 months
Problem
Tabs consume our most precious resource: Time.
Did you know?
An average knowledge worker visits 160+ URLs per day across 70 tabs. This accumulates to 200+ context switches and 3+ hours wasted each day.
User Problem
Business Problem
Solution
A self-organizing workspace for your browser tabs.
Iterations
Some of the many, many iterations
Persona
Iterative approach to find our target
Research & iteration led to the target persona, 'Self-aware Sam', aka the distracted high achiever.
Busy professional, mostly manager level
Juggles multiple projects & meetings daily
Likely has or suspects ADHD/ADD
Great at hyper-focus but prone to diving into the wrong rabbit hole
Sam's Job to be Done
When I want to focus, I want unrelated tabs saved in a way that makes me feel confident that I’ll be able to quickly find & remember later.
Strategy
Hypothesis-driven rapid (in)validation
Impact
420,000 tabs closed every week.
Everyday, Skipper closes 12 tabs per user.
That's 60,000 tabs per day.
420,000 tabs per week.
5,000
Weekly active users in 10 months
Avg. 50%
Week 8 retention in newest cohorts as of Jan 2025
3.2%
Paid conversion*
*Top quartile of AI products is at 3.9% while median is 1.8%
$900,000
