SeeSaw Labs + BusinessTaxes.AI
Building The Ultimate Tax Strategy Platform For SMB
Discover. Define. Design. Develop. Delight.
The Problem
Why "Build What You're Told" Fails
Requirements ≠ Outcomes
Well-written requirements can still lead to the wrong product. Without validating the problem, success metrics, and user needs, teams can deliver exactly what was asked for and still miss the business outcome completely.
Velocity Without Direction Creates Waste
Shipping faster doesn't matter if you're heading the wrong way. Teams that optimize for speed without clarity often burn budget building features that don't move the needle or create real value.
Clients Bear the Risk of Bad Decisions
In a traditional delivery model, agencies ship what they're told and move on—leaving clients to absorb the cost of misaligned strategy, expensive rework, and missed market opportunities.
We Operate Like a Product Team, Not a Dev Shop
Cross-Functional Teams
Product decisions aren't made in silos. By embedding product managers, designers, and engineers together, we align strategy, user experience, and execution from day one—ensuring every decision serves the end goal.
Business Outcomes Over Output
We don't measure success by features shipped or hours burned. We measure success by whether the product drives the results that matter—revenue growth, operational efficiency, market expansion, or customer satisfaction.
Shared Accountability With Clients
We don't just take orders and hand off deliverables. We partner with clients to own decisions, navigate tradeoffs, and drive outcomes together—reducing risk and increasing confidence at every step of the journey.
Framework
The Five D's Framework
A Simple, Repeatable Product Model
Clear purpose at every stage—AI accelerates every phase to deliver faster, smarter results.
Discover
Research user needs
Define
Clarify goals and scope
Design
Create solutions and flows
Develop
Build and iterate quickly
Delight
Measure and refine UX
Phase 1
Discover
What We Usually Hear From Clients:
  • "We need a new app"
  • "Our current platform is slow"
  • "Leadership wants AI"
What We Uncover:
  • The actual business problem
  • User pain points and unmet needs
  • Market expectations and benchmarks
Phase 2
Define
This is where most projects fail—because nobody agrees on priorities, tradeoffs, or success metrics.
We force clarity before design or code begins, ensuring alignment across stakeholders and eliminating costly surprises down the road.
Phase 3
Design
Explore solutions cheaply before building anything expensive.
Design is not just UI—it's problem solving made visible. We validate ideas through rapid prototyping, ensuring the right solution before investing in development.
Phase 4
Develop
We build production-quality software with speed, transparency, and adaptability.
We don't "throw designs over the wall." Product, design, and engineering stay integrated throughout development, ensuring seamless execution and continuous alignment.
Phase 5
Delight
Ensure the product actually delivers value after launch.
Shipping is not success. Outcomes are success.
Usage & Outcome Reports
Clear metrics on how the product performs against business goals
Improvement Recommendations
Data-driven insights on what to optimize next
Backlog of Validated Enhancements
Prioritized list of features backed by real user needs
Long-Term Product Partnership
Ongoing collaboration to evolve and scale your product
Discovery Insights
What We Heard From BusinessTaxes.AI
During our initial discovery phase, the BusinessTaxes.AI team highlighted a market opportunity and business plan for a new platform built on existing business processes.
Current Landscape
  • Exploring opportunity to provide customized tax strategies for network of thousands of SMBs
  • Current process to service customers in mostly manual
  • Desire to bring new solution to market which combines the best parts of Instead, Keeper, and Filed.com and has a simple, friendly tone
  • Would like to build iteratively and keep a human-in-the-loop for high touch processes
  • No current development team in place to build - looking for a partner to build and execute a strategic plan
  • Targeting early April for a demo of a prototype to investment group
Next Steps
How We'll Get Started & How We'll Work Together
Our partnership is designed for clarity, continuous feedback, and shared success, ensuring we build impactful solutions together.
Kickoff & Discovery with product & tech leaders
Align on vision, establish initial hypotheses, define success metrics, and set up our integrated collaboration tools.
Integration of developers and designer
Work in agile sprints, delivering incremental value, gathering feedback, and adapting as we learn and validate.
Iterative development & user feedback loops
Maintain a regular cadence of meetings, progress reports, and open channels for real-time discussions and decisions.
Partner with internal teams to go to market
Collaborate closely on challenges, celebrate milestones, and jointly drive towards achieving the defined business outcomes.
Project Schedule
Estimated Timeline
Our phased approach ensures continuous progress and clarity, moving from foundational understanding to a valuable launch and ongoing optimization.
1
Kickoff & Discover
Late Jan: Initial planning, hypothesis validation, and user research to understand core problems & feasibility.
2
Define
Early Feb: Align on priorities, specify key features, roadmap sequencing and establish clear success metrics. Define what product features are "real" for April demo.
3
Design
Late Feb: Rapid prototyping and user testing to validate solutions cheaply.
4
Develop
Mar: Agile sprints to build, test, and iterate production-ready software.
5
Delight
Mid Apr onwards: Launch, measure impact, and plan for continuous improvements/next phases based on real-world usage.
Pricing
Investment Breakdown
Our phased approach ensures transparent and predictable investment, aligning costs directly with clear deliverables at each stage of the Five D's framework.
1
Discover & Define: Initial Research, Strategy & Scoping - $15,000 flat fee (Tech Lead/Product Lead)
Tech leaders deep dive on market landscape, user profiles, competitive & adjacent products, technical architecture, and roadmap to support April demo.
2
Design & Develop: Prototyping, UX/UI, Build & Iterate - $32,000/month (Tech Lead/Product Lead/2 Eng./1 Design)
Engineers and designer rapid prototyping, wireframing, user testing, application building & iterating to validate solutions and refine product.
3
Delight: Launch & Optimize - $15,000/month (Product Lead/1 Eng.)
Smaller engineering team post-launch monitoring, performance analysis, and continuous optimization based on user feedback, business needs, and data.
Elastic Resource Model
Our approach and process allows for rapid and elastic scaling of resources to accommodate varying degrees of resource needs across production support, new product development, and strategic planning and architecture engagements.
We allow scaling in discrete units based on project role engagement and desired length of engagement time.
Product Manager + Engineer
Ideal for focused development of specific features or MVPs, leveraging a lean, efficient team.
Product Manager + Designer + Engineer
Best for comprehensive feature development from concept to user interface, ensuring both functionality and user experience.
Product Manager + Designer + 3 Engineers
Suited for larger-scale projects or accelerating development on complex modules, offering robust engineering capacity alongside product and design expertise.