Case Study
Figma to Production in 90 Days — With a True Partner
How K2 Venture Partners stepped in as the product quarterback ManifestEd was missing, took the platform from Figma to paying customers in a single quarter, and stayed on as the partnership moved into its next phase — helping ManifestEd’s CEO unlock a major fundraise along the way.
Agentic AI Small Business Coaching Platform
At a Glance
- 90DaysFigma to live SaaS
- 3Verticals LiveFrom a single codebase
- 90%+Test CoverageAcross the platform
- 0Content LostIn LMS migration
About ManifestEd
Manifest is an AI-powered platform built to help small and midsize businesses grow with greater clarity, efficiency, and confidence. Designed specifically for Main Street entrepreneurs, the platform combines AI assistants, actionable business intelligence, expert guidance, and community-driven learning experiences to support SMBs through every stage of growth. By delivering enterprise-grade AI tools in a practical, accessible way, Manifest provides AI automation for small businesses that empowers them to make smarter decisions and scale more effectively across its target markets, including pet care, deathcare, salon and beauty, and veterinary businesses.
The Challenge
Manifest wasn’t just building another software platform — they were creating a practical way for small business owners to access the kind of AI-driven guidance and operational intelligence typically reserved for large enterprises. Every feature needed to feel approachable, actionable, and immediately valuable for entrepreneurs balancing growth with limited time and resources.
ManifestEd had deep domain expertise and a clear product vision, but needed a dev team to own the outcome.
No Quarterback for the Product
As CEO Sarah Horn put it, ManifestEd was missing someone to own the product end-to-end — not another vendor, but a partner who would take responsibility for getting it to market.
An Offshore Team That Wasn’t Working
A scattered, full-time contract engineering team spread across time zones was shipping slowly and inconsistently, with no technical leadership driving toward a release.
A Product That Existed Only as Mockups
Despite months of work, ManifestEd had Figma files and no working software.
Content Trapped in Docebo
Hundreds of hours of coaching sessions, training courses, assessments, and staff materials were locked inside an enterprise LMS with no clear migration path.
Multi-Vertical Ambitions, No Platform Strategy
ManifestEd needed to serve pet care, deathcare, salon, and veterinary industries — each with its own branding, content, and AI coaching — without tripling the codebase or the headcount.
A Blurry Finish Line
When K2 stepped in, the team’s operating assumption was that the goal was migrating content from the old SaaS tool into "the new product." That framing undersold what ManifestEd actually needed: not a better-looking version of the same platform, but AI automation for small businesses that could expand into new verticals and support real business outcomes for owners.
The K2 Engagement: Ownership, Not Just Execution
ManifestEd didn’t need another set of hands. It needed a partner willing to take ownership and be accountable for the outcome — someone to run point on getting the product to market.
K2 Venture Partners embedded as fractional CPO and CTO from day one, taking direct responsibility for product strategy, technical architecture, and delivery.
Zooming Out to Product Outcomes
The first move wasn’t writing code — it was resetting the frame. K2 worked with ManifestEd’s stakeholders to move past the “migrate the content” assumption and build a shared understanding of what the product actually needed to become: not a facelift, but a platform built to expand across verticals and put AI automation for small business at the center of the experience.
That reframing came with a new way of working with stakeholders — a structured, tactical process to get the migration done while simultaneously building the roadmap for what came next.
A Full Re-Rack
Getting there meant right-sizing the team. K2 replaced the offshore group with a smaller, focused onshore crew that shipped faster and with far higher quality — making the hard calls early about what to build first, what to defer, and what technical stack could actually scale across industries.
Meridian-Powered Delivery
K2 deployed Meridian, its proprietary AI development platform, to move at speed across four roles — Product Manager, Architect, Designer, and Engineer — each grounded in ManifestEd’s actual codebase. Every feature was shaped before code was written, inside managed two-week build cycles with clear priorities, visible progress, and quality gates including 90%+ test coverage.
Migrating the Content, Without Losing the Thread
One of the highest-risk workstreams was migrating ManifestEd’s entire content library off its first-generation LMS: coaching sessions, multi-module training courses, assessments with scoring, staff workbooks, and progress-tracking data. This mattered even more given ManifestEd’s model — training materials built by real industry experts, designed to work inside high-turnover frontline environments where staff training has to be fast, repeatable, and easy to pick back up.
K2 built a custom LMS with a flexible content model supporting video, audio, documents, markdown, presentations, surveys, and assessments — migrating the full library without losing a single piece of content.
Built to Run Multiple Verticals at Once
Rather than separate applications per industry, K2 architected a white-label, multi-tenant system that runs multiple branded verticals from one codebase — each with its own branding, AI companion personality, industry-specific metrics, onboarding flow, and independent billing:
The Doggurus
Pet Care
Flagship vertical, first to market, 1,500+ members
Impart
Deathcare
Expansion vertical, live and growing
LumariPro
Salon & Beauty
Expansion vertical, live and growing
The shared platform lets new verticals reuse the existing codebase, with separate branding, content, and billing.
A Partnership That Didn’t End at Launch
Migration wasn’t the finish line — it was the platform for the next phase. K2 stayed engaged after the initial build, helping ManifestEd move into what came next as the roadmap continued to develop.
That continuity paid off in a way that went beyond the product itself. With a working platform that looked as strong as it performed, ManifestEd’s CEO was able to walk investors through the product directly — using it, not just describing it, to tie the new platform to a concrete revenue growth story. The product’s polish did real work in the room: it’s what sold investors, and it helped unlock a significant fundraise for the company.
What Was Built
AI Companion
A business assistant trained on real coaching sessions and financial data, tuned per industry vertical, pulling in actual QuickBooks numbers to advise owners on margins, staffing costs, and growth.
Learning Management System
A content hierarchy of plans, courses, and items across video, audio, documents, assessments, and progress tracking.
Business Intelligence
A KPI dashboard with QuickBooks integration for automated financial analysis and AI-generated insights.
Coaching & Events
1-on-1 coaching, group sessions, recurring event scheduling, and session recording.
Staff Management
Onboarding, training assignment and tracking, role-based access, and progress monitoring — built for high-turnover frontline teams.
Subscription Billing
Multi-tier subscriptions with Stripe, trial management, and add-ons.
Admin & Configuration
A full panel for vertical management, onboarding flow configuration, custom fields, and platform-wide settings.
Results: Robust AI Automation for Small Business
- Time to Production
- Figma to live customers in 90 days
- Platform Reach
- 3 industry verticals from a single codebase, architected for more
- LMS Migration
- Entire legacy library migrated, zero content loss
- Code Quality
- 90%+ test coverage across the platform
- Delivery Cadence
- 2-week build cycles with a smaller, onshore team
- Beyond Launch
- K2 remains engaged as ManifestEd’s product partner into its next phase
- Business Impact
- A product strong enough to anchor a major fundraise, tying platform investment directly to a revenue growth story
I want to emphasize how impressed our team has been with your approach to partnership. You’ve met this moment in our journey with thoughtfulness and genuinely partner-centric thinking.