Kikoff’s founders had decided to enter banking. My job was to turn that strategic bet into a product that customers rebuilding their credit would value, adopt, and keep using.
Kikoff’s core $5-per-month credit-building product could improve a customer’s credit relatively quickly, but the benefit naturally plateaued. That put pressure on retention and customer lifetime value.
The company decided to launch a secured-card and banking product to create additional customer value and a new revenue stream. The strategic direction was set, but the proposition, MVP and launch plan were still open.
I led the product from concept through launch, with adoption as the central product challenge. I ran market and competitive research, customer interviews, internal ideation, prototype testing and benefits research to understand what would matter most to consumers rebuilding their credit.
I also had authority to say no to features that did not belong in the MVP, which became important as we balanced customer needs, partner constraints, cost and launch timing.
One major debate was whether the product needed a large ATM network at launch. Our sponsor bank’s existing network was weak in many customer geographies, but research showed customers were comfortable with ATM-fee reimbursement and valued cash-back opportunities—particularly on fuel—more highly.
I deprioritized the expensive ATM network for MVP and prioritized a card-benefits partner that better matched customer preferences. Once the program reached a scale where the economics made more sense, we moved the ATM network back up the roadmap.
I led execution across approximately 10 engineers, two designers, product marketing and external sponsor-bank, processor and network partners, with support from legal, compliance and operations.
After launch, we used adoption, direct-deposit behavior, customer feedback, feature usage and retention data to continuously reprioritize the roadmap rather than treating launch as the endpoint.
The product launched on schedule, grew to tens of thousands of users, and reached approximately 30% adoption among exposed customers. Direct-deposit penetration increased from roughly 1% to 4%, while month-three retention of the core product improved by approximately 17%.
At the trajectory in place when I left, the program was forecast to become cost-neutral within 12 months.
I work with early-stage teams that need senior product leadership without a full-time hire.