Helios

TheHeliosteamsoldrevenueintelligencetoproduct-ledSaaScompanies,buttheirownproducttoldthestorybadly:metricsscatteredacrossfivetabs,chartsnobodyconfiguredandachurnsignalburiedthreeclicksdeep.

The mandate was blunt — make the money legible. One surface where a founder reads ARR, net new MRR and churn in ten seconds, and where the interesting anomaly finds you instead of hiding.

We rebuilt the information architecture around questions, not tables: how much, where is it moving, what changed. The main view answers all three above the fold, with an editorial calm — ivory paper, ink numerals, a single gold accent for money in motion.

The AI layer was designed as a colleague, not a chatbot: inline cohort suggestions, anomaly cards with a one-line explanation, and a command palette that turns "pro plan churn last 30 days" into a configured view.

1. WEEK 02

   The tab funeral

   We opened the old product with a stopwatch: 43 seconds and five tabs to answer 'how did we do this month'. That number became the enemy the whole team rallied against.

2. WEEK 06

   Gold gets a contract

   Mid-project, gold was leaking into buttons and icons. We wrote a one-line rule — gold only ever means money moving — and reverted fourteen screens. The dashboard got instantly calmer.

3. WEEK 10

   The founder demo

   First live demo with real data: the CEO stopped narrating, turned the laptop around and let the investor drive. That silence was the real acceptance test.

1. 01

   Numbers get the typography budget

   Metrics are set large in tabular figures with serif italics reserved for narrative labels. Hierarchy comes from type, not boxes — the dashboard has almost no cards.

2. 02

   Anomalies come to you

   A signal rail surfaces cohort shifts and churn spikes as small narrated cards. The user stops hunting; the dashboard reports.

3. 03

   The command palette is the API

   Every view is addressable from one input. Power users never touch the mouse; the AI suggestions ride the same rail, so the smart layer feels native instead of bolted on.

4. 04

   Gold means money in motion

   A single accent colour is reserved for revenue deltas. When something gold appears, it always means the same thing — attention earned, not decoration.

The dashboard became the sales demo.

10s

to read the three headline metrics, from login

-64%

clicks to reach a configured cohort view

4

enterprise pilots opened with the beta as the demo

Helios shipped its beta with the new surface as the centrepiece of every sales call. The founding team stopped apologising for their product tour — the tour became the pitch.