Telling the StackHawk Story
Turning a 15-Minute Technical Demo into a 3‑Minute Buyer Narrative
The website demo skipped straight to the technical details without speaking to the potential customer watching it. I rebuilt it as a story that leads with value.
Client
StackHawk
Role
Product Designer
Category
Visual Storytelling
Team
Solo
Duration
1 week
15 min to 3
Demo length reduced for the right audience
1 week
Conceived, built, and shipped alongside a full product sprint
$0 budget
AI scripting, Camtasia, ElevenLabs (no production resources)
Impact
StackHawk's website demo was a 15-minute recording made by a Solutions Architect who knew the product deeply. It was thorough, accurate, and aimed squarely at engineers who already understood application security. For a first-time buyer landing on the page, it answered the wrong questions.
I heard marketing flag it in a meeting. Nobody owned the fix. As a visual storyteller, I knew I could build something that would actually land with a buyer: a short, clear narrative that showed what StackHawk does and why it matters. Getting that right has real business impact. I took it on, delivered in a week, and the video replaced the original on the website.
The Problem
The existing demo was built for people who already believed in StackHawk. It went deep on the technical mechanics before establishing what StackHawk actually does or why it matters. The product needed to speak to both developers and AppSec teams, and a single technically-heavy demo wasn't going to land with both audiences.
There was no clear owner for fixing it. Marketing didn't have the production resources. Product wasn't prioritizing it. It was a real gap with no one to close it.
Problem Statement
The demo on our website was built for people who already believed in us, not the buyers we were trying to reach.
The Process
Getting the story right. Before I opened any software, I started with Post-it notes to get the core ideas out of my head and into a rough structure. Once I knew the key points I wanted to hit, I used Claude to help turn that framework into a tight script. The goal wasn't to condense the original video. It was to answer the question a first-time visitor actually had: what is StackHawk, what problem does it solve, and why does it matter to me?
Building it. I assembled the video in Camtasia, which I was already using for internal short-form content at StackHawk. The format mixed screen recordings, on-screen text, and simple animation, enough motion to hold attention without over-producing it. For voiceover, I used ElevenLabs to generate a professional narration from the final script. No outside production help, no budget.
Delivering it without fanfare. I looped in my boss before starting. At a startup you wear a lot of hats, and he knew I had the skills to pull it off. I let marketing know I was working on an idea around it. By the end of the week I shared it with marketing and our CEO, incorporated their feedback, and it was live on the website.
Key Decisions
Start from scratch, not from the existing video. The easy path would have been to condense what was already there. Instead I treated it as a blank slate with a different audience in mind. A buyer in their first 30 seconds of understanding StackHawk doesn't need a technical walkthrough. They need a plain-language "here's the problem, here's how we solve it." Remixing the old demo would have preserved the wrong frame.
AI as a bridge. We didn't have a copywriter to craft the script or a voiceover artist to record it. I used AI as a bridge between the idea and the finished product. Claude helped me shape the script, and ElevenLabs handled the narration. Another human-AI collaboration that produced professional-quality output without the resources a production typically requires.
Learnings
The right medium matters as much as the message. The original demo wasn't wrong in intent, but it was too technical and too long to connect with the range of people landing on that page. How you package information matters as much as the information itself. That's a design problem, even when it shows up in a video on a marketing page.
AI tools collapse the gap between idea and execution. Using AI for scripting and ElevenLabs for voice meant I could move at a pace that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. A professional-quality video in a week, solo, no budget. That's what happens when you know which tools to reach for and aren't afraid to use them outside your usual lane.