I spent four months as a Product Manager Intern at Phictly, a B2C SaaS startup whose product is a social app centered around book, movie, and TV show clubs, working in collaboration with the dev team, product team, growth team, and executive leadership to impact growth through product work and business development.
Problem
After joining the Phictly team in May 2026, executive leadership explained to me that Phictly's first in-app event, a book festival, would be the primary focus over the next several months. To prepare for the event, our main priorities were ideating and shipping the features needed to create an engaging in-app festival experience, producing marketing and promotional material, and developing partnerships with authors and publishing companies. The event was planned for July 24th, so we had a <3 month timeline to prioritize these three objectives.
Solution
Impact
• 21 total features shipped to create an engaging in-app experience focused on community building
• Each feature, paired with our growth and promotional strategy, drove an 11.69% lift in MAU
• Drove a 119.70% lift in weekly signups in a 3-week-to-3-week comparison (66 signups to 145 signups)
• Developed partnerships with 50+ authors and 4 publishing/publishing adjacent companies
• Established a network, promoting the Phictly brand and setting us up for future events and partnerships
USER JOURNEY & UI
The festival user journey begins by opening the festival tab. To gain access, users need to enter their ticket ID number from the ticket that they purchased before the event. Here, users can immediately see our sponsors and navigate through our featured vendors, featured authors, and each of our partnering authors' booths. Users can view the full-day schedule to see all of the public panel sessions happening throughout the day, or they can use the search bar and/or filter feature to find specific authors, booths, and/or panel sessions.
Users can click on any book or panel to read more about the author and their book. Once the user finds a panel or booth that they're interested in, they can join the queue, and once admitted to the call, they can have a 2-minute one-on-one in-app video call with the author. If a user decides to join a panel, they can join without a queue at any time as long as the panel has begun. Here, they can watch a live discussion shared between the guest speaker and a member of the Phictly team. Users can see the total number of audience members at any given time, engage and ask questions in the chat, enable or disable speakerphone, or leave the panel at any time.
REVENUE MODEL
Problem
Considering Phictly is at an early stage, we do not yet have an established revenue model. As we continue to gain traction and shift focus to securing investment, establishing a revenue model without feeling salesy or betraying our local users is our biggest priority after the festival event.
Solution
As a Growth Product Manager Intern, I spent a portion of my time conducting research and establishing several revenue models that I believed would work best for Phictly's product. In a < 2-week timeline, I laid out 7 potential revenue models tailored to work with the needs and strengths of Phictly's product. After pitching my models to executive leadership, I secured buy-in for Phictly to adopt one as their core revenue model, which is currently in development and will launch within the next several months.
Impact
• Designed and pitched 7 potential revenue models to executive leadership
• Secured buy-in for Phictly to adopt as their core revenue model, currently in development with plans to launch in several months