Life of a Founding Product Designer
By Harsh Potphode, Founding Product Designer, Runable
Before Runable
I was the founding product designer at an agentic B2B platform, where I helped streamline the mundane operations of heavy industry, with AI at the core of everything we built.
I enjoyed the exposure to AI. I didn't know then how much deeper I'd end up going.
How I Got to Runable
Most product design is about building a thing for a user. Runable is building the thing that helps users build their own things.
I'd believed for a while that AI would make building easier. Watching it happen, faster than I expected, made me want to work on the layer above: not the thing being built, but the interface that helps people build it.
A friend introduced me to Runable, and the team was already on it. The interview wasn't really an interview. It was a conversation with Umesh, Runable's CEO, about UX in the agentic era: how you build fast with agents, and how you help your users build faster themselves.
Two people who think alike about where design is going. I was in.
Seven Months In
Today I'm the solo product designer on the team. Nearly everything you see on Runable has passed through my hands. When you own that much of the product, you stop thinking in features and start thinking of it as one experience you're responsible for. Every decision has to feel like it came from the same place.
Coming in early also meant the brand wasn't handed to me. I helped shape it, at a stage where identity and experience are still one decision, in a market where most AI products look the same.
I came here to work on the layer that helps people build. I didn't expect how much it would build me.
Nobody Has a Job Title
Every week, the whole team, engineers, designers, everyone, gets on a call with real customers to hear what's frustrating them and what they want. For that hour, nobody has a job title.
That's not a company line. I don't only design. I work with almost everyone, on their design inputs, on revamps, on testing whatever needs testing. Nobody stays in their lane, and the product is better for it.
Why It Works
None of this happens without Umesh, who lives the culture the rest of us follow. He believes in the team so completely that you start believing too, and then you deliver. Seven months in, 1.5M customers. That’s what happens when you build fast, test everything, never lose the customer's voice.
