How do you make an app that blocks phone use in class feel fun?

What about a loading screen that jokes about unclogging a toilet?

Trivial as that may sound, quirky details like these are what distinguishes products people merely use from products people remember, love, and trust.

A designer at heart, Patrick Cui is the co-founder and CEO of Doorman, which blocks cell phone distractions, automates attendance, and helps students build better digital habits. In this interview, Patrick shares important design lessons from copywriting at Ramp, knowing when to turn off “founder mode,” and why quality is really a compounding game, where seemingly minor improvements add up to become an unfair advantage.

Also in this issue: 

Read time: 7 minutes

Reach: What inspired you to start Doorman?

Patrick: A long time ago, my co-founder (Brian Hawkins) and I were building an app that helped high schools manage schedules and activities on campus. During one of our sales calls, a principal told us: I love your app, but we can’t use it because we’re banning cell phones. He shared how parents were tearing up because their kids have mental health issues caused by cell phone usage and addiction to social media.

He then proceeded to give me a 20-minute rant that was absolutely gold for any founder to hear on just how acute the problem was, not just for him but for everybody.

Every single school now has to comply with new state laws on personal phone usage, and the only option they had at the time was to put phones in pouches — the same ones used at comedy shows and concerts. It was such a primitive reaction to a problem that was so complex.

There was such an asymmetry between the solutions and the problems that we wanted to do something about it.

This is not your first rodeo with Reach. You were the first design hire at TeachShare, another Reach company. What did you learn from that experience?

At TeachShare, my strengths complemented the teams’ very well: I brought expertise in product building, the team had raw technical chops, and Aryan is a wizard in terms of distribution and building a company in general. There was a lot of autonomy afforded to me on how I wanted to do the design and build the features.

Now at Doorman, I want to give people that same level of autonomy. When it comes to hiring, we want people who can take a larger goal and figure out the details themselves. I want someone who I can tell: “This is the larger problem, here are some of my thoughts, here are some of my co-founder’s thoughts and you can take over from there.” Each person feels like they have a bit of ownership over the product.

Being such a design-minded perfectionist, sometimes it's hard for me to let it go. Sometimes I want to turn on my founder mode, get into the nitty gritties, and make sure they're doing it exactly the way I want. But that doesn’t work when it comes to running a team. I have to give people a little bit of breathing room. That’s the most valuable lesson I learned from working with the co-founders at TeachShare.

You were also previously on Ramp’s design team. What was a lesson that resonated most from your time there?

This answer is not very conventional: copywriting. It's such an ignored piece of design.

Every single time we went into design review — every single button, every single sentence, every single title — they wanted to cut the copy in half. Because there shouldn’t be that many words needed to clearly convey to users what something is and what it’s trying to accomplish. People would debate about just the two or three words in a title.

This attention to detail works bottom-up, from each individual text element to how things come together in larger pages and features. It forces you to ask: What is the essence of this page or feature?

Everyone had strong opinions, and that’s the second lesson I learned: when you have disagreements over a design, take a step back and ask: What is the larger goal we’re trying to accomplish? We use that at Doorman every day. Reminding ourselves of the whys helps us stay  grounded and make good product decisions.

How do you define quality?

Quality is doing more than what was asked. How do you take something good and make it great? That’s the separation between something that’s barely good enough and something that has taste.

If a school types in their name during onboarding, why make them type the address too? Just fill it in. It’s a small thing. But small things accumulate across every piece of the product, and that's what separates you.

If something takes a long time to load, our loading screen doesn't say “please wait.” It says “unclogging the toilet” or “making the internet work.” A lot of people laugh when they see this. These unnecessary bits and pieces are sometimes what actually separate a great design.

One of the lessons Steve Jobs learned from his father was that when you paint a fence, you also have to paint the inside — it doesn’t matter if other people will ever see it. This is a principle that we take to heart, to the corners nobody may see. Sometimes there’s a setup flow that only gets used a year, but let’s make it look great. No corner of the product falls outside of that philosophy.

In a space like edtech, that separation doesn't just make the product more pleasant to use. It increases trust.

What do you wish you’d known before becoming a founder, and want to impart to the next generation of builders?

Deep investment in building the product is one side of the coin. The other side: how do you convince people to believe in you? How do you motivate them when everyone thinks your business has to shut down? These are interpersonal skills that cannot be vibe coded.

In our first months, the product was struggling. One of our first customers was ready to walk. The only reason they didn’t, I found out later, was that they enjoyed working with my team. They knew whatever problem they were facing was temporary. That trust wasn’t expressed in our product. It was expressed in how we behaved and how we carried ourselves.

The other thing: 90% of founders are chasing 10% of the problems. More founders should go after the overlooked problems, even though there’s less venture capital, even though it’s harder, even though it's less sexy. If you’re talented enough to be considered for a seed round by a reputable firm, you should spend part of your life worrying about how you can help others. That’s your responsibility as somebody gifted with the ability to build, to lead, and to convince others of a mission.

Two of the year's defining design conferences landed on opposite coasts: Replit's Vibecon in New York and Figma's Config in San Francisco.

Despite all the AI demos and product launches, everyone seemed to be wrestling with the same question: what becomes more valuable when anyone can generate an interface?

A few ideas that stood out:

Reimagining care for families and caregivers

Building the future of social in the age of AI

Many more founders are browsing the Repo Network, our early-career talent community, for their next technical and creative hires. Add a profile here to get on their radar.

HAGS,

Valentina and the Reach team

Reach Capital invests in early-stage founders redefining how we learn, live, and work. Our portfolio of 130+ startups includes tools you might’ve used in school (ClassDojo, Desmos, Brilliant) and next-gen, AI-native disruptors shaping how future generations build, work, and thrive (like Replit and GPTZero). 

These teams are constantly on the lookout for talented builders. Share what you’re studying, building, or exploring, and we’ll intro you to projects, people, and paid opportunities for you to build upon.