The Ninety Mobile App: Building for the New Age of Work

Work doesn’t look like it used to. It’s not just happening behind desks or between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. anymore. It’s happening everywhere — on job sites, in trucks, on factory floors, in kitchens, and across time zones. We’re shifting into what I call the new Age of Work — and it’s reshaping how, where, and when Work gets done.

At Ninety, we knew our product had to evolve with that shift. It had to go where the Work is.

That’s why building a mobile app wasn’t just a product enhancement. It was a commitment to our vision and our users. A way to meet people where they are, especially those who aren’t tethered to laptops and office chairs. This was about access. About equity. About empowering every team member to do great Work — wherever they are.

Our customers weren’t just asking for mobile as a convenience. They were asking for the missing link — the piece that would bring Ninety to life for everyone in their organization. So we got to work.

When I asked Kyle Phillips, our Head of Product at Ninety, to lead our mobile initiative, he’d only been with us for six months. He was still learning the full depth of our product, our market, and our culture. And yet, he found himself leading one of our most visible, high-stakes initiatives to date: building and launching our mobile app.

It was a long-awaited promise to our customers — a promise to make Ninety even more accessible. We needed to get this right.

Speed Matters — But Not at the Cost of Value

When we decided to move forward with developing a mobile app, we knew time was of the essence — and truth is, we didn’t have much of it. We set an ambitious goal: to deliver a beta version of the Ninety mobile app by the end of the first quarter of 2025, with a full release a month later. The clock started ticking in Q4 of 2024. We needed to design, build, test, and launch a polished, high-value experience.

Why such a bold timeline? Because timing matters. Our market (like most right now) is competitive, and getting in early in the year gives you a shot to capture attention. Wait too long and you miss the window. Your customers choose alternatives, and you spend the rest of the year trying to play catch-up. You need to come storming out of the gates with new value and give your product a chance to shape the conversation, not chase it.

So yes, our team felt the pressure. But we also felt the opportunity.

The thing is, speed without value is just chaos. And when you’re building something like this, every decision carries weight. The functionality has to be purposeful, and the experience has to be intuitive so users actually want to keep using it.

That’s why we pulled together a focused, cross-functional team. We met daily, built iteratively, and worked side by side on experience and execution. And from the start, we brought our Ideal Stakeholders into the process.

Designing for Where Work Actually Happens

The best product decisions don’t come from a whiteboard. They come from connecting strategy with empathy. So we didn’t just guess or make assumptions about what our customers wanted. We listened. We spent time with them — asking questions, digging into real use cases, and identifying patterns and pain points.

We both truly believe companies get the greatest value from Ninety when everyone in the organization is using the platform. Many of our customers operate in industries where not all team members sit behind a desk, places where “remote” means something entirely different than Zoom. It can mean job sites, shop floors, work vehicles. It means work that’s mobile by nature. That’s where Ninety needed to go.

These conversations helped us flip our thinking. Instead of trying to replicate the desktop, we asked:

What would a mobile-first experience of Ninety feel like? What’s essential?

Take the way we handled issues. On desktop, you see issues by team, which works well if you’re focused on one team at a time. But if you’re prepping for multiple Weekly Team Meetings on the go? Or moving across functions? That model doesn’t translate. So in the app, we created a unified view. One place to see all your issues across all teams — with filters like “created in the last 24 hours” to help you focus fast.

It’s a small feature but one with big impact. The kind of decision that comes from listening closely, thinking deeply, and designing with real Work in mind.

Building with What You’ve Got

Within a few weeks, our team locked in the core design and started development. We didn’t get new, dedicated engineering resources for the mobile initiative, but we worked with the resources we had: a highly capable team, a flexible framework, and a shared belief in the vision.

That’s more than enough when you know how to build with what you’ve got.

Truth is, this is where some leaders trip up. They underestimate their team, or worse, they never really take the time to understand what their people are great at. If you want to build something meaningful, you need to know the strengths and limits of your team. You need to know who thrives in ambiguity. Who can connect dots. Who can go deep. And you need to give them a reason to care.

Because when people understand what they’re building — and more importantly, why it matters — they show up differently. They do their best Work, the kind that moves things forward and builds momentum.

Yes, we ran into challenges. Several, in fact. Some of the functionality we envisioned didn’t even exist in the platform yet, which meant we were solving upstream and downstream issues at the same time. But our team stayed focused and resilient. Every blocker became a puzzle to solve. And we solved them, fast.

Making the Call: Launch or Wait?

Every launch comes with a moment of truth — that point where you’ve got to decide: Is it ready? Or do we wait?

As we neared beta, there were still a few features left on the whiteboard. So we had to make the decision to either delay for more features, or launch something valuable now and keep improving.

In our case, these features weren’t blockers. They were “nice to haves.” And one of our Core Values — get smart stuff done — isn’t just about finishing things. It’s about delivering value when it counts. We focused on what mattered most and moved forward with confidence.

That mindset made the difference. We launched the beta.

And the market validated our call. Hundreds of users signed up and began actively using the app. Feedback rolled in, and it was incredibly positive. They loved the direction and design. And, just as importantly, they gave us clear input on what they wanted to see next.

That feedback shaped our road map. And it confirmed what we suspected: We didn’t need to launch perfect. We needed to launch on purpose and let our customers guide what came next.

That’s how we build at Ninety. Thoughtfully, iteratively, and always with our Ideal Stakeholders in mind.

Bringing It to Market

Once the beta was out in the wild, we shifted gears. Because no matter how good a product is, it doesn’t matter if people don’t know it exists. A great product still needs a great launch.

We wanted the market to hear it, loud and clear: Ninety’s mobile app had arrived.

Our customers had been waiting, some for years. And with more than 250,000 users already on the platform, we had to do more than drop an announcement. We had to connect.

So marketing took center stage. We built a multi-channel campaign: email, in-app messaging, social, web — all of it focused on the things that mattered most to our users. Speed. Accessibility. Visibility. We weren’t just launching an app. We were helping our teams to do more great Work.

And yes, we hit a few bumps. A last-minute compliance flag from Apple. A bug that forced a rapid new build. Another round of app review that almost pushed our launch off schedule. It’s never as simple as you want it to be.

This is the part that can test you. When your timeline’s at the mercy of someone else’s process, when you’re waiting for a green light you can’t control, it’s tempting to press pause or pull back.

But we stayed the course. And just one day before launch, we got the approval we needed.

We were live.

More Than a Launch

The launch went off without a hitch. We hit 10,000 downloads within days. The app climbed to #36 in the App Store. But metrics only tell part of the story.

The deeper success was this: We created a platform that delivered on years of anticipation, and our customers truly love it.

We didn’t wait for perfection. We launched something valuable, let user feedback shape and refine it, and built trust along the way. That’s the kind of Work we strive for — productive, humane, and resilient.

Building and launching the mobile app wasn’t just a product initiative. It was a cultural moment for Ninety. We came together across teams to create and launch a truly great addition for our customers. We proved (again) that small, empowered teams can do extraordinary things. That clarity, alignment, and vision can carry you through setbacks and ambiguity. And that when you focus on what really matters — on making it easier for people to do great Work — you build something that lasts.

We’re proud of our new app. But more than that, we’re proud of how we did it.

And even more excited about where we go from here…

Want to learn more about Ninety’s new mobile app? Check it out now.