To the 37signals team,
I'm thrilled to be applying to join 37signals as a Product Designer.
Please find my resume below, along with my full cover letter, which highlights relevant work and my inspiration for this application.
Brian Casel
[email protected]
Career summary
From 2008 through today I've owned and operated my own business full time. The following is a summary of businesses and products I've run:
Instrumental Products
My product design studio and consultancy where I work with clients to take new product ideas from concept to launch. I'm also currently building a Ruby on Rails components library called Instrmental Components, aiming for launch in Q2 2025.
Clarityflow
It started as a simple SaaS product for asynchronous video communication, but grew to become a full-featured platform marketed to coaches. I founded, designed and built it with help from my team of 1-2 back-end developers. Today it's maintained with 1 developer and support person.
Audience Ops
A productized service business offering blog content writing. I founded and managed all aspects from its launch to growing the remote team to 25 people, to selling and exiting the business in 2021.
ProcessKit
A SaaS product I founded, designed and built, aimed at helping small businesses automate their processes. I sold this business in 2021.
Productize
A video course and community I created and managed, which helped consultants package and position their services as products. I sold this business in 2020.
Restaurant Engine
A website design platform for the restaurant industry. I founded, built and designed all templates and bootstrapped this business until its sale in 2015.
Prior to my self-employed journey, I began my career in professional web design at two agencies based in New York City.
MCD Partners
Front-end HTML & CSS developer where I worked on globally recognized websites for clients like AT&T, Discover Card and others.
Squeaky Wheel Media
Front-end HTML & CSS developer where I built websites for national brand clients like Blue Buffalo, Pepsi, and others.
Skills
Designing in HTML and CSS has been my core professional skill and focus throughout my career. But as a business owner of 18 years, I've expanded my skillset to include:
Front-end web development
Starting with HTML and CSS, then growing into a strong foundation in Vanilla JavaScript, and how these interact with various back-end languages and frameworks.
These days, my go-to front-end stack includes hand-writing HTML, Tailwind CSS, and Stimulus JS.
User interface design
From conceptual wireframes to simple and effective interfaces, my primary focus as a product owner and founder has been the user interface and experience.
All of my products UI has been hand-crafted and coded by me. This has included new user onboarding flows, complex dashboards, video communication interfaces, automation workflows UI, billing and checkout flows, and more.
Ruby on Rails
In 2017 I started my journey to transition from a front-end designer to a full-stack product maker. Ruby on Rails has been my priamry back-end framework for all of my products ever since.
Product marketing design & copywriting
What started as a general "web design" skill turned into a deeper understand of how products are marketed, positioned, and branded on the web—primarily through designing the sites for my own products.
My focus as a web designer has always been on the copy and how it flows with the design. When wearing my product marketing hat, I design a path to help customers make an informed buying decision with as little friction as possible.
Product management & customer development
Bringing products to market always involved a heavy amount of customer research. This has included everything from user interviews, to surveys, to analyzing customer behavior.
What I've learned is while customer research can serve as inspiration, ultimately the product's direction requires a strong conviction and instinct, which is something I've grown to trust in my work as a product owner.
Video production
Much of my product work has required video production to explain and demonstrate the product. This led me to pick up decent video editing skills and a general creative interest in communicating well through video.
Team management
I've hired and managed remote teams for many years, leaning heavily on asynchronous communication style and emphasizing a calm and productive work culture.
I'm proud to say that almost all of my teammates stayed with me for multiple years. In some cases, they returned to work with me for a second time.
Education
My most valued skill I picked up in my early career at web design agencies was the skill of picking up new skills and figuring out solutions—as a means to shipping products.
But I suppose my formal education is worth mentioning too :)
Colombia College Chicago
I studied audio engineering and music production at Colombia College Chicago. My focus was on studio recording, mixing and mastering.
The music career didn't pan out (web design paid better), but writing and producing music continues to be a passion and hobby I hold to this day.
Indiana University
I started my college career at Indiana University, Bloomington, where I studied music theory, audio engineering and liberal arts.