Caden – Monetizing Personal Data & Driving $6M Series B Funding
As Director of Product Design at frogVentures, I led the UX vision, information architecture, and visual design for Caden’s zero-party personal data app. Our work defined the MVP experience, clarified product-market fit, and helped secure $6M in Series B funding.
Role
Director of Product Design
Timeline
12 weeks (2023)
Platform
iOS/Android Mobile App
Team
Founder, Investors, frogVentures Design Team
Before (Challenge) → After (Solution)
Unclear product-market fit and multiple hypotheses for monetizing personal data. → Defined product vision and UX for a zero-party data app focused on shareable insights and cash rewards.
No unified design direction or MVP roadmap for launch. → Delivered strategy and scalable design system to guide roadmap development for first product iterations.
Needed to capture investor and user attention in a crowded privacy-tech market. → Designed a visually compelling, user-centered experience that contributed to securing $6M Series B funding.
How WE Got There
Aligned stakeholders by mapping founder vision, investor expectations, and technical realities of the dev team.
Led user research and competitive analysis to explore potential product directions.
Designed and tested three app concepts:
NFT-based experiences tied to user preferences.
Behavior comparison tools against peers.
Direct income model for connected services.
Facilitated a day-long workshop with Caden leadership to pressure-test hypotheses and focus the product vision.
Designed a system for personal insights—shareable infographics and dashboards to drive engagement and virality.
Delivered a visual design language and onboarding flows for the MVP, enabling users to monetize their data and connect additional services.
From a customer perspective, getting paid for your personal data was the clear winner, but the concept of using that data to generate insights into your own and others’ habits was also very strong. As a group, we decided to focus on how to visualize insights from personal data so they could be intriguing and sharable in their own right.
Innovative Deliverables
Onboarding Flows: Seamless introduction to data connections and rewards system.
Streamlined onboarding focused on getting the user earning money as quickly as possible.
Dashboard Design: Tracks earnings and incentivizes additional service connections.
The initial home screen dashboard will show the amount the user has earned for their connections within Caden and incentives for connecting more. The more data users collect in their digital wallets, the more data populates Caden’s data warehouse.
Insight Infographics: Eye-catching, shareable stats about user habits and data value.
The insight statistics generated should be eye-catching, shareable moments. These are infographics about your habits that you might enjoy sending to a friend or your feed. There will also be monetary and in-app benefits for referring new members.
Design System: Visual hierarchy and component library for scalable product iterations.
Final screens for the first versions of the app. We developed a strategy and designs to fill Caden’s road map of development for the first few iterations of the product.
Impact
Result → Outcome
Defined product-market fit for launch → Guided Caden’s MVP roadmap and GTM positioning.
Delivered on time & on budget → Completed research and design program in 12 weeks.
Drove funding success → Contributed to $6M Series B investment with clear product vision.
View www.caden.io
Design POV
“Privacy-first data tools often feel abstract or technical. I focused on making Caden’s UX feel approachable, rewarding, and visually delightful—empowering users to see their data’s value and share insights effortlessly.”
Key Reflection
“This project reinforced how critical early hypothesis testing and stakeholder alignment are in defining a winning product vision. Next time, I’d expand prototype testing to include edge-case audiences to de-risk adoption.”
Visit Caden
Visit: www.caden.io