From a sketch to a dispatch product customers pay for
Product strategy, design and a SaaS platform for routing and dispatch, from zero to paying users.
The challenge
Kestrel’s founders had spent ten years running a regional courier business and knew exactly what dispatchers hated about existing tools. They had a sketch, a waiting list of interested operators and no product.
They needed something paying customers could use within a quarter, without building features nobody would use.
What we did
One team from scope to launch. The stack behind it:
Scope by interview
We interviewed nine operators in the first fortnight and cut the feature list to three jobs: plan today’s routes, react to changes, and prove delivery.
A dispatch board that updates live
Routes, drivers and exceptions sit on one board that updates in real time. Dragging a stop re-plans the route and tells the driver.
A driver app that stays out of the way
The companion app shows the next stop, navigates and captures signatures and photos, offline when signal drops.
Billing on day one
Self-serve sign-up, trials and subscription billing shipped with the first release, so the founders could charge from the start.
The outcome
Twelve weeks after kickoff, Kestrel signed its first paying operators. We stayed on as the product team through the next two releases while the founders hired their own engineers, then handed over the codebase, docs and pipeline.
“We came in with a rough sketch and left with a product customers pay for. They pushed back in the right places.”
Co-founderKestrel
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