Outpace
Creating a better professional coaching and training framework in a zero-to-one startup.
Professional coaching and mentorship have supply, discovery, and efficacy problems. Outpace was founded by experienced mentors and coaches with experience from Tinder, Meta, and Netflix to solve this problem. We worked with them to bring their idea to life.
Objective
Design a learner-first coaching experience, define the structure for new “Sprints” (interactive courses), and build scalable foundations for both learners and coaches.
Highlights
Directed zero-to-one vision exploration, workshops, and design strategy.
Produced user flows, high-fidelity designs, and prototypes.
Balanced scope across shifting priorities and unexpected expansions.
Mentored and coordinated multiple designers across time zones.
My Role
As the Design Lead & Manager I was the point person for managing both internal teams and external stakeholders.
Internally I managed a team of 2 Product Designers. My responsibilities included zero-to-one product strategy including roadmap and product mapping. I directed and reviewed work daily, and ensured weekly alignment with stakeholders.
I worked occasionally with a Design Director for high level support along with a Product Delivery Manager for operational support. I also collaborated with our Director of Engineering in planning the development project that would follow our design scope.
Externally I worked directly with the 2 co-founders who were former executives from Tinder and Meta. As the Lead I was the main voice and responsible individual for strategic alignment and output.
Approach
Setting the Vision
Big projects need strong foundations. Early workshops focused on vision alignment and idea generation. I led workshops of cross-disciplinary teams (product, design, and tech) to both generate diverse thought starters and build trust and rapport across everyone involved.
Action: Ran “Blue Sky/Dark Sky” exercises to surface shared hopes and risks, and “Silly 8s” sketching to spark diverse concepts.
Impact: Built early trust, surfaced creative ideas that carried forward, and gave us the raw material for first user flows.
Mapping the Product
With ambitious scope, we needed a framework to guide decisions and trade-offs. By generating key artifacts through collaborative workshops I helped the team zoom out while also identifying potential risks areas. Product Mapping also formed the basis for collaboration with 2 different development partners.
Action: Created a Service Blueprint and Product Map, organizing epics by user journey and priority.
Impact: Gave stakeholders a clear “negotiation table” for scope management, making trade-offs transparent as priorities shifted.
Designing Sprints
At the heart of Outpace was a new learning format: Sprints — interactive, coach-led experiences rather than static courses. These differed from offerings from Udemy and comparable services by integrating more live interaction and discussion. This required new thinking around workflows and processes.
Action: Iterated on Sprint structure: breaking content into weekly sessions, adding deadlines, and defining coach-learner messaging rules.
Impact: Delivered high-fidelity designs and a prototype showing how accountability and coach feedback created a richer learning process.
Expanding Scope to Coaches
Mid-project, we inherited the entire Coach Platform, originally scoped for another partner. Our team added another Product Designer while I coordinated a new workstream in parallel to the mobile app that focused more on client management and content creation.
Action: Added a remote designer to the team, adjusted timelines, and partnered directly on design handoffs while mentoring other product designers on the learner side.
Impact: Despite timezone gaps and compressed deadlines, we delivered both platforms (learner mobile app and coach web app) ready for launch.
Outcomes
Dual-Platform Launch
Completed learner mobile and coach web experiences in ~4 months.
Scalable Foundations
Service blueprint and product map set a structure for future growth.
Team Leadership
Balanced scope, onboarded new designers, and maintained momentum through tight deadlines.
Reflections
While Outpace ultimately shut down after 1.5 years due to funding climate, the design process itself was a success:
I learned the value of trusting others and distributing ownership.
Scope management and rapid adaptation became key lessons.
Even without long-term market success, the project validated the need for better coaching frameworks — a problem still worth solving.
