Navi: Scaling the First Mover
“I don’t have 12 more pairs of hands. I’ve got 12 more brains and 12 more pairs of hands. And that’s worth a lot more for what we’re trying to do.”
KEY RESULTS SUMMARY
Product Manager freed to focus on growth, not development process management
5+ years in, multiple long-term strategic deals closed with US carriers
Delivery velocity increased by more than 400%
Carrier onboarding moved from custom development to configuration
The IntentSG embedded team grew from 1 to 12–13 people alongside the business
THE GOAL
Navi saw a new market opportunity, helping consumers navigate the complexity of the ever-evolving mobile provider pricing and landscape of deals. A proprietary ML model pulling fresh carrier and deal data in near real-time, across multiple end-user experiences, made that possible. With a unique idea and no competitors in the space yet, the timing to move fast mattered.
The goal was to own the market rapidly, and gain a first mover advantage.
THE PROBLEM
The founding team was handling sales, support, customers, the product backlog, and major portions of the SDLC; they were doing what founding teams do… everything to get to initial release and close the first few customers. However with the team stretched thin, it was clear that something had to change to support the necessary business growth.
People: The founders knew that having the founding team continue wearing so many hats wasn't an option. They would not be able to meet the business's ambitions without losing quality. A traditional hiring process would put pressure on their ability to move fast and their cashflow.
Process: Hand holding every detail of the SDLC was making it very difficult for the VP Product Management to focus on supporting the company growth and the demands of new customers. The PM needed the SDLC to just run and he needed a team that he could trust to move quickly in the direction he set.
Technology: As is typically the case when moving from MVP to scaling the product for multiple customers there were a number of areas that needed some refactoring. For example, onboarding new customers was requiring too much custom development work and resulting in unique version per customer. On top of that, the data pipeline team was constantly challenged with sites changing or implementing anti-scraping technology thus breaking the data collection so critical to the near real-time nature of the platform.
These are good problems to have for an early stage company. It means that they are growing and what used to work now needs to be matured in parallel with company growth. Maturing the process, refactoring the technology, addressing a rapidly growing product backlog, all while supporting all other business functions was no longer feasible for the founding team. Something would need to change for the product and business to scale.
HOW WE DID IT
To execute at the pace and quality the opportunity demanded, Navi turned to a known and trusted partner in IntentSG. Here's what we did, and what we spotted and fixed along the way.
Rapidly build and onboard the product development team
We started by rapidly building a dedicated global team of 5 who took responsibility for the user-experience components of the platform. Instead of ad hoc decisions and no predictability, we worked with the Product Manager to add the right amount of formality to the SDLC: sprint planning every two weeks, a defined backlog and regular releases, clear communication channels between the entire global team.
Fixed a scaling problem Navi didn't know they had, and kept the data flowing as the business grew
The app wasn't built to support multiple clients, meaning every new carrier required a unique version of the software. We built the client's product as if it were our own. It put us close enough to spot it, propose the fix, and ship it as one unified team, making configuration-based onboarding possible.
Helped scale the growing data pipeline team
We embedded 2 engineers directly in Navi's existing web scraping and data pipeline team to keep the data flowing despite the blocks.
THE NEW REALITY
Navi's Product Manager shifted more focus to market and product growth, free from managing the day-to-day development process and able to work directly with 3 new customers.
5+ years in, Navi has closed 5-6 long-term strategic deals with new customers, and the engagement is still ongoing adding value each day.
Delivery velocity increased by more than 400%, giving Navi's team the speed to sign customers knowing the product development team could keep up.
A metadata-driven architecture made carrier onboarding configuration-based, replacing custom development work for every new client. Reducing onboarding time and cost easily by a factor of 3x.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Navi reached the point where the model that got them to their first release and first customer could no longer support the pace of growth the business demanded.
The usual options look like this: spend months recruiting engineers who may or may not work out and who may or may not stay long-term, or bring in a development “vendor” that delivers code but doesn't take ownership and treats your product like a consulting project. Neither solves the real problem. It's not just headcount. It's building a product development operation that can scale alongside the business without sacrificing quality or burning cash.
The answer is a partner who integrates with your team, takes joint ownership of delivery, and brings enough process maturity to let your product and business leaders focus on growth. Not a development vendor you manage. Instead a team that manages itself with you setting direction.
In 2 months, Navi went from a founding team doing everything to a 6-person embedded product team shipping predictably. Delivery velocity increased by more than 400%, customer onboarding moved from custom development to configuration, and the engagement is still going more than 5 years later. Navi continues to expand into new business channels and discover new use cases for their platform.
If you are a founder or CTO that has done the very hard work to get to initial product release and has achieved product market fit but is seeing your team struggle to keep up, Navi's story will look familiar.
TECHNOLOGY STACK
Python, Flask, Angular, AWS