Founding product engineer

Substrate

Making equipment financing feel simple for small businesses that have never been through it.

At Substrate, I help build the path from “I need equipment” to “you’re approved.” Small businesses apply for financing on trucks, tractors, and machinery. Most have never borrowed before, so the challenge is turning a confusing lending process into clear steps they can actually finish.

I work across the whole buyer journey: the landing page, application, offer, and the dashboard buyers return to afterward. When I redesigned the landing page around an emotional video, the share of buyers who submitted their application jumped from about 25% to about 45% within a week, and it held. I also led design on our partnership with one of the world’s largest equipment auction companies, building the financing experience their buyers use.

Behind the scenes, I built Substrate’s design system, redesigned the internal tool our operations team uses on every deal, and set up the analytics that let us see results like the one below.

These are selected parts of that work. Some product details aren’t public, but I’m happy to talk through my role and process.

This involved product design, a design system built in React and TypeScript, and product analytics.