Anan is an anomaly as a founder. He built a bootstrapped business in a lucrative niche — text-to-speech. After building on it relentlessly, he found PMF in people who want to do natural, authentic sounding voiceovers.

But, in 2023, the space started heating up. Many competitors, like PlayHT, and ElevenLabs, started raising money, doubling down on R&D and product.

That’s when Anan decided to step up the design for Listnr.

Role

• Product Strategy
• UI + UX
• Prototyping
• Component Library
• Visual Identity

Time Commitment

4 weeks

Team

• Just me 🫡

Process

🏂 Listnr — Current Problems + user feedback

🤔 Who am I building for?

🏦 Business Decision: Simplifying Voices

🧠 Ideation — Crafting the perfect podcast editor

🪄 Extra Magic — adding an invite flow + a signup loop to get more users

👹 Tech Decision — Frankenstein-ing a component library

User testing and feedback

💡Last moment Epiphany — the quick speaker switch

Reflections

Making something from scratch is always a thrilling experience.

• One of my major learnings was to always involve the user. The amount of constructive feedback they have is insane. Many times, they have found ways around the flaw of the product. And removing that friction from them always gets a huge sigh of relief.
  • Build for the user, With the user.