The billion-dollar fund management industry relies on outsourced administrators managing massive Excel sheets, translating legal agreements into formula, and juggling shifting LP pools. Maybern handles this complexity with math-driven allocations and a user-configurable calc language, mXL.
At its core, Maybern reconciles capital calls, LP opt-outs, distributions, and tax-sensitive fund structures. The vision goes beyond accounting to empower CFOs and fund offices with instant insight into performance so they can move from chasing numbers to making proactive decisions.
For fund managers, the biggest pain point is access to their own numbers. Legacy systems give fund administrators control, so even simple requests like “capital called to date” can take days or weeks.
Our challenge was to give users full visibility and flexibility while maintaining accuracy and compliance. Fund accountants retained control of the math, while end users needed freedom to explore, visualize, and export data. The goal was simple to state but complex to execute: empower users to manipulate and present their data.
I interviewed stakeholders in administration, operations, and investor relations to understand how reports were requested and created. Three report types consistently emerged: investor tear sheets, providing quick snapshots of LP performance; ILPA reports, the standard format for institutional investors; and dry powder reports, which summarize unallocated capital for investment decisions.
I mapped a unified information architecture for all reports, including report name, description, columns, filters, and preview, save, and export functionality. Conversations surfaced the need for file management and reusable templates to onboard users and standardize reporting.
From there, we defined the north star vision: a fully featured hub with AI-assisted setup, templates, report runs, dashboards, and graphing capabilities. This aspirational target aligned the team around the future of reporting, then we worked backward with engineering and product to define an MVP that prioritized usability and critical functionality.
The north star envisioned a fully integrated hub to keep users in the Maybern ecosystem rather than exporting to Excel or BI tools. Users could start from blank or template-based reports, parameterize, timestamp, and schedule them. Within each report, users could define groupings, filters, and select calculations from a searchable library of built-in or custom mXL functions. The focus here was on “A-Ha” moments, graphing, and feature richness over accommodating every possible permutation.
This process unified leadership and stakeholders. By grounding aspirational designs in real fund accountant workflows, we earned buy-in to prioritize usability and UI finesse, then worked backward to define a lean, achievable MVP.
MVP focused on perfecting core workflows: creating, running, and exporting reports. Internal reviews surfaced a few usability and technical constraints, like confusion around historical runs of a single report and deferred nested menu complexity.
We built a report database where each run is treated as a variation, clarified column setup into “Group By,” “Attributes,” and “Time” steps, and replaced dropdown menus with a dynamic sidebar that adapts to selections.
While the MVP was with eng, customers got excited about the potential for generating IRR bridges, which visualize how an investment’s return develops over time. Design explored integrating this into Report Builder as a flexible graphing tool. Users can input starting and ending values, select drivers like leverage or timing, and generate dynamic charts bridge graphs.
This project taught me that starting with a north star gives stakeholders something to get excited about. The polished future state made people feel heard, while the MVP showed how we’d get there. Finding that balance between aspiration and execution was what built trust across design, product, and engineering.
In finance, beautiful visuals only matter if they reinforce the math behind them. The most elegant chart means nothing without accuracy, and the best product experience builds confidence first, delight second.