⚡️ Your Growthmates Monthly Recap: Building with intention in a season of change
Personal reflections, lessons on balancing ambition with life transitions, and best practices you missed from Magic Patterns, Figma, Obi, and 20+ more product teams.
Hello everyone 👋 I’m Kate Syuma, and welcome to Growthmates.news — the newsletter where we explore growth stories to inspire your professional and personal growth. Join the community of 7,500+ Product, Design, and Growth people from companies like Amplitude, Intercom, Miro, Atlassian, Grammarly, Framer, and more.
If March felt like it went by fast — you’re not alone. It was a full month. Full of decisions, momentum, small wins, and a few deeply personal shifts happening in parallel.
Some seasons push you forward, others make you rethink how you move and this one felt like both. Between relaunching the Growthmates podcast, working closely with clients and stepping into a new life chapter, the past few weeks carried a different kind of weight.
And just in case you missed something during this season of building, reflecting, and quietly redesigning what comes next — I wrapped everything up for you in one March recap 💜👇
🚀 Growthmates Recap: Top of March
If you’re reading this newsletter, thank you — it truly means a lot. March made me pause more than usual and look at things from a slightly wider lens. Not just what I’m building, but how I’m building it.
This month brought a mix of growth and realignment. I shared with 24K+ of you that I’m becoming a mother, continued working with Autodesk as a PLG Advisor, and continue relaunched the Growthmates podcast with a new focus.
But beyond the visible milestones, this month reshaped how I think about work, energy, and ambition. For a long time, I believed that building a company and being fully present in your personal life had to be a trade-off. March was the first time I started designing for both — with more intention, more structure, and more honesty about the season I’m in.
It’s been a defining, slightly uncomfortable, but very grounding shift. Here are the highlights from this month 👇
Before we dive in… Meet Growthmates Partners 🚀
I curate the Growthmates Bundle to share not just ideas — but the tools I trust and use in my own work. Each one is a handpicked #1 tool for a key product area, and I’m proud to have them supporting this newsletter 🖤
Best way to support Growthmates? Explore these fantastic tools below 👇
Framer — the fastest way to design and publish stunning websites (Growthmates.club is built on it).
Mobbin — the largest UX & UI reference library for deep product inspiration.
Obi by Cor — AI-powered onboarding voice assistant, I truly recommend.
Magic Patterns — The fastest way to prototype and test new features with AI.
💫 Personal highlights of last month
A season of intentional growth. Behind the scenes, this has also been one of the most structured quarters I’ve ever had. The last 90 days beat my old 6-figure Miro salary. It was a focused mix of client work, partnerships, and content. I’ve been thinking a lot about sustainability and scale. For years, I optimized for learning. Now I’m learning how to balance it with leverage — building things that can grow beyond my direct involvement.
A nonlinear path that finally makes sense. This month, I found myself reflecting on my career journey more than usual. On paper, it still looks anything but linear — from business informatics to design, from marketing to product, from leadership to building Growthmates. For a long time, that felt inconsistent. Now I see it differently. Each chapter added a layer I rely on today — systems thinking, craft, positioning, user psychology, and ownership. What once felt scattered has become a stack.
Designing a business for a new life chapter. One of the biggest shifts this month was learning how to approach work with more intention. Preparing for maternity leave made me rethink everything — from how I structure revenue to how I use my energy. Instead of reacting, I started planning ahead, systemizing what I can, and letting go of what doesn’t truly matter. The biggest realization? You don’t have to choose between ambition and presence. You just need to design for both, in a way that fits the season you’re in.
Working with Autodesk as a PLG Advisor. This month also marked a meaningful milestone — continuing my work with Autodesk, my first Fortune 500 collaboration at Growthmates. We’ve been working closely with product, design, and growth leaders across a complex ecosystem, shaping how PLG operates at scale. What makes this work especially exciting is the level of systems thinking it requires — aligning teams, products, and strategy into one coherent growth approach.
Growthmates podcast: new conversations on The Creator’s Path. We also continued the new podcast season with two conversations that stayed with me. With Felix Haas , we explored the idea that you don’t need permission to think and act like an entrepreneur — it starts with a decision. And with Catt Small, we talked about consistency, creative momentum, and why you don’t need a big audience to begin. Both conversations are, in different ways, about agency — and what it really means to take ownership of your path. Check B
📬 Featured Growthmates resources you might miss:
Your homepage should convert in seconds, not minutes — I curated 50+ homepage best practices from top SaaS companies and broke down the 3 elements every high-converting landing page needs: clarity, value visualization, and low-friction action.
What AI products get right (and wrong) about onboarding — Lessons and onboarding patterns from AI products like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gamma, Synthesia, and more — based on hands-on research across 7 leading AI tools.
📣 Would you like to share your product story or co-create valuable content together? I’m opening a calendar and planning sponsored engagements 👉 Send your request to hello@growthmates.club.
🚀 Featured LinkedIn posts:
AI onboarding should guide, not just explain — Most B2B products lose users not because the product is bad, but because implementation is hard. I shared how tools like Obi use real-time screen guidance to replace calls, reduce friction, and build user confidence during activation;
Time-to-first-value is the new growth metric — Many teams still optimize for the full “aha moment,” but users don’t wait that long anymore. I break down why the best products now engineer fast, early signals of value — often within the first 60 seconds;
Your portfolio is your highest-leverage asset — I shared the exact 10-step structure I used to build a portfolio that still brings clients years later. The key shift: focus on impact, decisions, and outcomes — not just process or visuals;
The scariest career decisions often change everything — A personal reflection on leaving corporate life as an immigrant without a safety net, and how learning to rely on yourself becomes the foundation for real freedom;
Figma’s onboarding isn’t about features — it’s about momentum — A breakdown of FigJam’s 7-step onboarding flow and why learning through action, not instructions, is what turns new users into active collaborators;
AI prototyping works better with systems, not prompts — Most AI design tools generate beautiful but inconsistent outputs. I explained how Magic Patterns flips the workflow by starting with a design system — leading to faster, scalable UI generation;
💡 Solopreneurship milestones:
Speaking at a new community format in Amsterdam — joining Localie’s Saturday Creative Brunch to share my journey from Miro to Growthmates, and connect in a more open, conversational setting;
P.S. I appreciate how my solopreneurship stories on LinkedIn were well received — I really didn’t expect that resonance, and I truly enjoyed answering each comment and sharing real life stories.
📣 Growthmates reading radar — check this out:
Turn content into AI playgrounds — by Lenny Rachitsky: 350+ newsletters and 300+ podcast transcripts released as AI-ready data. A powerful example of how content becomes infrastructure for building new products and experiments.
10 things to invest in for 2026 — by mallory contois: A sharp list on what actually compounds — from building your POV and network to using AI for leverage and developing resilience in uncertain times.
What makes a strong design CV today — by Lena Kul: A practical breakdown of why task-based portfolios don’t stand out — and what actually matters: ownership, systems thinking, and real product complexity.
The hidden cost of the AI era — by Ioana Teleanu: An honest reflection on AI anxiety, pressure to keep up, and identity shifts — and a reminder that uncertainty is shared, not individual.
Use cases vs JTBD (and why it matters) — by Anthony Pierri: A simple but useful lens on how jobs-to-be-done and use cases connect — and how this thinking helps identify real product opportunities.
🤝 More ways I can be useful to you:
Onboarding Design Sprint 🏃♀️
I will work closely with your team to help you fix your product growth challenges and improve the first user experience that can drive x2 uplift on your Activation.
⚡️ Fully booked. Join a watlist to work with me →
PLG Advising for your company 🧠
Hands-on, in-depth advising across product, UX, and growth to build a scalable, sustainable PLG system that will last for years.
⚡️ Fully booked. Join a watlist to work with me →
PLG Training for your team 🎓
A structured PLG training using the same frameworks I’ve taught teams at Grammarly, Autodesk, Monday.com, Intercom, Atlassian, and more.
⚡️ Fully booked. Join a watlist to work with me →
Brand Partnerships 📩
Let’s tell your product story to a trusted audience of 30,000+ product, design, and growth leaders — and co-create meaningful content that inspires the wider product and design community.
👉 Send an inquiry to hello@growthmates.club
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💬 Quote of the month:
“Done is better than perfect.”
SHERYL SANDBERG
This is all for today, dear readers. If you find this newsletter valuable, share it with a friend or another creative builder 💜 It would give huge support for me to continue creating this!
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With best regards,
Kate Syuma