Design and product partner for consumer startups

People try your product. Let's find out why they don't come back.

I'm Schaefer. I advise consumer startups, especially games and subscription apps, on why people try their product and don't come back, and I help their team fix it. Most recently I led a design team at Netflix Games, which runs like a startup inside Netflix.

Let's talk How I help

Where I've led design: Netflix Games Aimlabs Blizzard Entertainment Los Angeles Times Zynga

Sound familiar?

Your product is out there. The numbers aren't there yet, and you're not sure why.

Players try your game, then drift away.
Subscribers sign up, then cancel.
People try it, but they won't pay.

It often looks like a design problem. Usually it's a direction problem too.

Early on, design gets pushed to the back burner so the team can move fast. That makes sense. But the people trying your product are still deciding whether it's easy to use, whether they trust it, and whether it's worth coming back to. That experience happens either way: by design, or by default.

How I help

A senior partner who speaks business, product and design.

Find what's really holding it back

We look at the product, the data, the team and how work gets done, and name the real problem. Not just the loudest one.

Test before you bet big

Small experiments and fast design sprints, using AI to build and test ideas with real customers in days, not months.

Get your team rowing the same way

Product, design and engineering working from one shared picture of where the product is headed.

What changes when we work together

Where things felt adrift, momentum builds again. The team finds a rhythm you can feel.
You get quick, senior answers on design choices, what to build and what to cut, so your team stops waiting.
Ideas get tested small before the team bets big, which saves months of rework. With AI, code is cheap. Time, focus and customer trust are not.
You stop acting as the stand-in Head of Design and get back to being CEO.
You gain a thinking partner who will challenge assumptions, pressure-test ideas and help shape the vision as it happens.

Working together

Start small. Keep going if it's working.

Start here: a 3-week check

About 3 weeks, fixed price

One question: why aren't people coming back? I dig into the product, the data, the team and how you work together. You finish with a clear read on what's holding it back, plus a small set of experiments to run first.

Then, if it's working, two ways to keep going:

Design and product partner

About 10 hours a week, month to month

I work alongside you and your team as a hands-on partner.

A clear look at what's working and what's broken in the product, the team and how you work
Small experiments to test ideas with real customers before you bet big
Ongoing coaching for you and your team

Advisor

About 10 hours a month

A senior sounding board for you as the founder.

Regular sessions to work through product and design decisions
Feedback on direction, scope and priorities
Someone in your corner between sessions

Also available: design sprint workshops that get the whole team aligned and test ideas with real customers, plus help hiring, vetting and growing your first designers.

Results

I've been in your shoes, at startups and at scale.

startups, including early Zynga

26M

monthly players on Battle.net, Blizzard Entertainment's game platform

15%

lift in engagement and retention at the LA Times

20+

person design team built from scratch at Zynga

Aimlabs

Chief Experience Officer

Aimlabs was small, so I partnered with the CEO on strategy and also worked hands-on with the team. Product and design both reported to me, as one team.

The CEO brought me in to fix the user experience as Aimlabs grew past 25 million players. Once I dug in, the design problem was really a direction problem. Design was busy building features, and product was chasing a long list of requests.

We turned the roadmap into small revenue experiments, kept what caught on and built on it. One of those experiments became the subscription model Aimlabs still runs on today.

Netflix Games

Design Manager

Netflix Games runs like a startup: lots of unknowns and lots of changes in direction. When I joined, a handful of designers were each working on their own, and the pieces didn't fit together. I built them into one 9-person team, responsible for the Netflix Game Platform, that works hand in hand with product and engineering. That setup is still in place.

I also ran a design sprint on the Netflix Game Controller that went from open questions to a working prototype built with AI tools, tested with real players.

Blizzard Entertainment

Head of Design, Battle.net

I led a 40+ person design team on Battle.net, the game platform behind Blizzard games like World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch. I changed how the team worked together, and led a rebrand of the platform that lifted engagement at scale.

Los Angeles Times

Design Director

Before the relaunch, I sat down with the leadership team to get everyone on the same page about what we were really building. After the relaunch, engagement and retention went up 15% and subscriptions went up 2%. I've used that same kind of leadership session ever since, including at Blizzard.

What I believe

Design and product strategy should never be separate conversations.

Great products come from people who trust each other and share the same picture of where they're going. When product, design and engineering are pointed the same way, even a change in direction becomes something the whole team can handle together.

About me

Hi, I'm Schaefer.

I've led design teams from scrappy startups to companies at huge scale: Netflix Games, Aimlabs, Blizzard Entertainment, the Los Angeles Times and early Zynga. I'm best known for connecting a big product vision with the day-to-day work of making it real.

What I'm proudest of is the people. Mentoring teams across design, product and engineering, and building the kind of care and trust that makes hard work feel good.

Now I work with a small number of consumer startup founders at a time, so I can give each one real attention. I'm based in Sierra Madre, California, and work with founders anywhere.

Let's talk

Does this sound like where you are?

Tell me a little about what you're building and where people drop off. No pressure either way.

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