Shane Fontane / How I got here
How I got here
The start
Music and community
01
Design was how I gathered people around an idea—and made it real.
In high school, I spent every day in graphic design class learning Photoshop. I printed posters and T-shirts to promote the music I was producing and DJing.
In New York City, I found a creative circle. We organized parties at nightclubs. Soon, I co-founded a booking agency to represent our DJ friends locally and internationally.
That became Parade ATW, a nightlife site covering the NYC scene through interviews, essays, event photos, forums, and work from writers, photographers, videographers, and on-camera personalities.
Doors opened
Vonage
02
Party flyers became proof.
First design role in tech
After a major family shift, I applied to a roughly 30-person Series A startup with party flyers and early agency work. That night, Vonage hired me as its first designer. From Series A through the IPO, I worked on every sales, fundraising, and marketing presentation. Vonage was my school, and I attended for six years.
Help Each Other
San Rafael
03
Making things kept changing what seemed possible.
A question on the train
On the commuter train home from New York City, I daydreamed about a life where I wasn’t chasing paychecks across state lines.
The first idea—someone paying to live vicariously through me—couldn’t scale. A simpler idea could: many people contributing a little to help someone else do something that mattered.
That became Help Each Other, the crowdfunding startup I co-founded. Building it brought me to San Rafael, California in 2008.
Raised$150K
Experimentation
Optimizely
04
Building A/B testing tools.
At Optimizely, I led the design of Full Stack from zero to one—an experimentation product for developers. I went on to lead design for Program Management, then Growth. Across that work, I learned what it takes to build a culture of experimentation.
2016–2020 / Optimizely / Staff Product Designer
Leadership
Grammarly
05
Eventually, the opportunity became something I could create for others.
At Grammarly, I grew Growth Design from one person to six product and content designers, hiring for complementary strengths and organizing ownership around three parts of the journey.
Growth Design1 → 6Product + content designers
- AcquisitionWebsite
- ActivationOnboarding
- MonetizationUpgrades and checkout
06
How this shaped how I lead.
- SupportShow up for each designer in the way they need, whether that’s coaching, critique, education, or removing blockers.
- OwnershipGive people enough runway to develop and execute their own point of view, rather than just implementing yours.
- High barStay close enough to the work to help raise craft and quality, including being in the pixels and bringing in outside perspective when useful.
Today
Still making
07
Today / Atlassian
Today, I lead design for Atlassian’s Growth Web Platform.
I’m designing how Atlassian personalizes the journey from a first website visit through sign-up and onboarding. In parallel, I’m working with partners on an AI-assisted authoring system that gives Performance Marketing and Content Producers direct control over creating and updating web content, with agents and models taking on work that would otherwise require engineering.
- 01AI-assistedCONTENT PRODUCERS / PERFORMANCE MARKETERS
- 02PersonalizationFIRST VISIT / RETURN VISIT / SIGNED-IN
- 03ActivationSign-up / onboarding / growth
I’m grateful for this story, for every opportunity it opened, and excited to keep going.