0 to 1 productHow I uncovered product gaps and informed M&A decisions—then leveraged usability insights to potentially drive adoption across Ripple’s products.
Context
This three-part project, spanning 2025, I influenced the creation of Ripple’s stablecoin and fiat collection product from 0 to 1. It began with a couple of simple questions from Monica, Ripple’s president: “Where is the gap in our current offering? How can we win?”
Phase 1 - Benchmarking Competitors and Identifying Product Gaps
In Q1 2025, as part of a coordinated research effort with PMM (for quantitative survey) and PM (for prospect visit), I conducted desk research on the competitor for a week, followed by four weeks of in-depth interviews.
Outcome — Beyond understanding how and why customers rely on competitors, our cross-functional research with Product and Product Marketing surfaced a more important insight: the largest gap wasn’t in Ripple’s current offerings, but in the capabilities we didn’t yet provide. I articulated why this gap mattered strategically and how it could influence Ripple’s long-term product direction.
Phase 2 - Amplifying Insights Across Orgs on the Product Gaps and Advising M&As
I presented the findings from Project 1 to cross-functional teams—Corporate Development, Product, Design, Marketing, Engineering, and Customer Success. Through analogy and storytelling, I emphasized the “so what”: what product gaps existed, and why they mattered.
Outcome - The report garnered over 250 internal views across all seniority levels and directly informed Ripple’s acquisitions of Rail.io (August) and Palisade (November), closing critical product gaps.
Phase 3 - Usability Testing and Identifying Growth Drivers (Ongoing)
Following the Rail.io acquisition, I collaborated with Product Design to conduct usability testing on the newly designed UI, thereby reducing risk ahead of the beta launch.
Outcome — The usability testing not only improved the new UI ahead of beta launch, but also revealed opportunities to support growth in adjacent Ripple products: insights that weren’t part of the original scope but proved valuable for cross-team planning.
Q1-Q4 2025
Phase 1 & 2
Identifying product gaps, amplifying insights across the orgs, and advising M&A
Phase 1 & 2 Tasks & Actions
Partnered with Market Insights to ensure our workstreams complemented each other. Their quantitative survey identified what features mattered most to users, while my qualitative research uncovered the why behind those priorities.
Brought the Product Manager into the research process by inviting her to user interviews, sharing weekly progress updates, and preparing her for prospect visits. This helped build shared understanding and early alignment around the product gaps we were uncovering.
Coordinated with an external research vendor to source and recruit the right users, ensuring we had coverage across relevant customer segments.
Identified and articulated key product gaps using an analogy that made the competitive landscape clear and accessible. This helped teams see how competitor offerings differed from Ripple’s. See artifacts below.
Advised Corporate Development on the strategic implications of the product gaps, clarifying why these differences mattered. My work informed Ripple’s 2025 acquisitions of Rail.io and Palisade.
A coordinated research effort between PMM, UXR & PM
Unpack complex relationships with visualization 👉
Step-by-step, I helped my stakeholders to understand:
The high-level customer journey and the pain points that matter most.
The relationships and dependencies between key players involved in the workflow.
These visual artifacts made complex concepts easier to grasp and aligned cross-functional teams around a shared understanding of where Ripple was and was not meeting user needs.
👈 Explain A New Concept using an analogy
I used a relatable “post office” analogy and simple visual language to make it easier for all stakeholders to understand the competitor’s offering:
How the competitor’s product works.
How customers are actively using it.
What tangible benefits does the competitor deliver that Ripple does not.
Phase 3 (Coming soon)
Usability Testing and Identifying Growth Drivers