Hey Cohen
An SMS and communications platform for relationship-driven businesses, reading business context already sitting in spreadsheets and class software to surface who's worth reaching out to and why. Designed, built, and shipped solo, from paper sketch to a real school's re-enrollment numbers.
Role
Founder · Design + Code
Timeline
2026
Team
Solo
Hey Cohen is the first product I've taken fully from zero to launch. After years working on complex product teams at Amazon, I took a step back and focused on building something of my own. I designed it, built the systems underneath it, worked through the business model, built the AI layer, and shipped it into a real business. I learned a lot along the way, and it made me a product builder.
It's also the clearest demonstration of how my design practice has evolved. I still care deeply about understanding the problem, shaping the product, and getting the details right. But I'm now designing and building in a much more integrated way, using AI throughout the process and creating intelligent features that feel natural to the people using them.
Headliner is a local music academy in Rocklin with around 250 students. The business runs on constant communication with parents and students, from schedule changes and recital reminders to closures and program updates.
Cohen, Headliner's director, is the face of the school. Parents know him by name. They sit in the lobby while their kids take lessons and end up in thirty-minute conversations with him. That's the relationship the business runs on, personal, specific, and built over time.
Hey Cohen brings together the business context already sitting across the music management software and spreadsheets, including enrollment, billing cadence, attendance, and session notes. It uses AI to surface who's worth reaching out to and why, whether that's a growth opportunity, a promotion, or a retention concern.
The Problem
- The average class management software costs $400 a month
Headliner pays $298 for Opus1's base subscription and CRM tier, $99 for SMS, and $99 for a more capable email tool.
- Systems don't connect
No APIs, no free integrations, so getting usable data meant exporting spreadsheets and reshaping them by hand.
- Messaging took hours.
A mass email took about an hour. Targeted outreach, like recruiting for a band or promoting a recital, took four to five hours of manual curation.
- There was no texting
Communication happened in person, by individual email, or by phone calls that often went to voicemail.
Process
The idea started on paper, sketching the core flows by hand before any code. From there I moved into VS Code to prototype the workflows, connected them to real Headliner data in Supabase, and iterated on the data model until it held. Then I moved into Figma to polish the interface and define a real design system, followed by continuous iteration until every flow held up and shipped.
Refining the UI
Maybe it's a reminiscence of my Amazon years, but lately I prefer to document what I'm trying to build, the problem I'm solving for the user, the business needs, and the scope of work. It helps me write down the Jobs to Be Done and start quick wireframes for the information architecture.
By then, I know what each screen needs to do, and I instruct Claude Code to build the initial skeleton. As we all are well aware by now, the first working version, while looking decent, leans heavily on default AI-generated styling, predictable spacing, monospace typefaces, the use and abuse of eyebrows, beige backgrounds, pill buttons, and punchy headlines.
It worked well enough to get me to a working prototype and nail down onboarding, messaging, filtering, and all the crucial milestones.
Early version. The first Claude version. Functional, but it screams vibecoded.
Key Features
- Daily insights
Hey Cohen surfaces risks, milestones, and opportunities worth a staff member's attention, grounded in real attendance, billing, and teacher notes.
A priority feed that turns attendance, billing, and notes into visible follow-up moments.
- Natural language search
Target the audience using any combination of filters that helps narrow them down. Or just describe them in plain language, and Hey Cohen turns that into a recipient list.
Target the audience using any combination of filters that helps narrow them down. Or just describe them in plain language, and Hey Cohen turns that into a recipient list.
- Human-in-the-loop
A human drafts the text message. Hey Cohen helps polish it, adds context, and suggests improvements, but it's still the sender's call.
A human drafts the text message. Hey Cohen helps polish it, adds context, and suggests improvements, but it's still the sender's call.
- Brand voice
Teach Hey Cohen how your business sounds. Set brand voice preferences, upload approved images, and let the AI polish language so outgoing content stays consistent with how you want to communicate.
Teach Hey Cohen how your business sounds. Set brand voice preferences, upload approved images, and let the AI polish language so outgoing content stays consistent with how you want to communicate.
- Data reconciliation
Many class management software systems don't freely open an API. Bringing business data into Hey Cohen meant establishing a framework for spreadsheet import and value reconciliation, then turning that data into something the rest of the product could actually work with.
- Inbox & campaigns
Every message sent becomes a direct communication path: traceable, attributable, and built for action instead of getting lost in personal texts or missed calls.
Every message sent becomes a direct communication path: traceable, attributable, and built for action instead of getting lost in personal texts or missed calls.
Every message sent becomes a direct communication path: traceable, attributable, and built for action instead of getting lost in personal texts or missed calls.
What's Next
- Develop Odeon
Expand Hey Cohen into a broader class management platform covering scheduling, billing, payments, student tracking, and curriculum, with the long-term goal of replacing Opus1.
- Develop CharterPulse, part of Odeon
Build a module to manage charter schools, subsidized enrichment programs, and other third-party payers with complex payment workflows. CharterPulse will reduce administrative burden and help academies serve more families, including those seeking specialized education for children with special needs.
- Add Email and WhatsApp
Expand communication beyond SMS with email and WhatsApp, giving academies more flexibility to reach families through the channels they already use and prefer.
- Improve onboarding and SMS adoption
Simplify the 10DLC registration and phone-number setup experience while helping small businesses understand how to use SMS effectively as a professional customer communication channel.
*Based on 278 students enrolled in May and 202 during the summer session (76 not re-enrolled); 52 of those 76 returned by August 15 after targeted campaigns sent by instructors through Hey Cohen. September re-enrollment is still open, so this number may continue to move. Tuition estimate based on a $40 30-minute lesson rate and 4–5 prepaid sessions/month. Labor savings based on a $26/hr admin rate — one campaign (band recruitment) took 4–5 hours of manual audience curation, reduced to about 10 minutes in Hey Cohen.