Zavvis started with a line I heard over and over again from small business founders: “I don’t know what my business is worth, and I can’t afford to guess.” That one sentence became the heart of this project.
Company
Zavvis AI
Timeline
2024
—
2025
Role
Product Designer
Full Case Study
Project overview
Most small business owners juggle spreadsheets, dashboards, and endless tools… but still walk away unsure about their valuation, growth metrics, or whether they’re even investor-ready. I wanted to change that.
This was a real-world MVP for an early-stage startup, where I worked as the solo product designer (yep, one-woman design army yay ✨). I partnered with the founder, PM, devs, and data analysts to build a finance AI dashboard that could actually help founders feel confident about their business decisions.
Zavvis AI became a financial co-pilot: a place where valuation, investor matching, KPIs, and a conversational AI guide lived side by side: simple, human, and accessible even if you didn’t have a finance background.
Challenges
“How might we make finance, one of the scariest, jargon-filled spaces... feel like something you could actually understand and trust?” That was the big question. Add to that: how do we design an AI assistant that feels like a mentor, not just another chatbot?
What we found from research and usability testing:
Dashboards dumped data without context → users left more confused than informed.
Founders didn’t know what to ask the AI, or if they were “doing it right.”
Financial terms felt intimidating (burn rate, runway, multiples: all Greek to non-finance folks).
Competing products weren’t built for small business owners: too admin-heavy, too technical, or too generic.
We solved this with:
Business Valuation tool → real-time, plain-language valuations from simple data uploads.
Investor Matching → tailored profiles so outreach feels targeted, not random.
Conversational AI Assistant (Virtual CFO) → proactive, context-aware guidance with friendly tone and prompt chips.
Zavvis School (tooltips) → bite-sized explanations of financial terms so users learn as they go.
Desktop-first dashboard → clear KPI cards with % changes and trend arrows, giving numbers meaning at a glance.
Results
The Zavvis prototype went through multiple rounds of usability testing with early-stage founders. Feedback confirmed what we hoped: making finance conversational, visual, and guided worked. Founders felt less overwhelmed, more supported, and more confident making decisions.
Reduced confusion with contextual KPI cards + guided flows.
Brought mentorship into the UI through the AI assistant.
Shifted from “just another finance tool” to a trusted co-pilot.
Simplifying complexity is a design superpower users don’t necessarily want less data, they just want clarity. That’s why tone mattered so much in this project; the AI assistant had to feel human and empathetic, not robotic.
I also learned the importance of documentation and alignment with stakeholders early on, it’s what kept the MVP focused and grounded. Interestingly, coming from a non-finance background actually became an advantage; if I could learn the concepts and simplify them, I knew users could too. And finally, working in fintech reminded me that ethical design isn’t optional… every word of guidance carries weight.
Full Case Study
