Kate Valdes is a product designer and strategist specializing in complex enterprise platforms.
Over the past 15+ years, she has helped organizations bring clarity to data-dense systems where workflows, decision environments, and operational outcomes intersect.
Her career began in fintech at BlackLine, where she helped guide product design during a period of rapid growth and the company’s eventual IPO.
She later contributed to product initiatives at Netflix and Discovery Education, gaining experience across industries where complex software systems power everyday operations.
Kate’s work with private equity firm PSG exposed her to a wide range of enterprise SaaS platforms navigating rapid growth.
Across these companies, a common challenge emerged: as products scale, complexity compounds. Workflows fragment, data models drift, and platforms become harder to evolve.
This insight became the foundation for This Waay.
Today the studio helps SaaS companies clarify product workflows, modernize complex platforms, and introduce intelligent capabilities that scale with the system.
Rather than layering AI on top of fragile foundations, This Waay focuses on strengthening the underlying product architecture that intelligent systems depend on.
This Waay was built on a simple belief: intelligent systems only succeed when the product foundations beneath them are designed to support them.
Positioned between Silicon Valley and Tahoe National Forest, Sacramento sits at the intersection of California’s technology, investment, and innovation ecosystems.
From here, This Waay partners with SaaS companies across the country to solve complex product challenges and support the evolution of modern enterprise platforms.
While many of the companies we work with are distributed teams, the studio remains closely connected to the broader West Coast technology community and the product leaders shaping the future of enterprise software.
Sacramento offers the focus of a smaller city while remaining connected to one of the world’s most influential technology regions.
Modern enterprise software is rarely limited by features. More often, the challenge lies in fragmented workflows, misaligned data models, and platforms that have evolved faster than their underlying architecture.
This Waay works directly with product and engineering teams to clarify these systems before introducing new layers of capability.
Our work often focuses on:
Workflow clarity.
Understanding how real operational work flows through a platform and identifying where friction or complexity emerges.
Platform modernization.
Strengthening information architecture, interface structure, and product foundations so systems remain coherent as they evolve.
Intelligent capability design.
Introducing automation and AI in ways that support real workflows while maintaining trust, governance, and system integrity.
Many teams engage This Waay when product complexity begins to outpace
platform clarity.
These situations often arise during periods such as:
As products expand across teams and features, workflows and data structures become harder to maintain and evolve.
Teams seeking to simplify data-dense platforms while preserving the operational capabilities their users rely on.
Organizations introducing intelligent capabilities into systems that were not originally designed to support them.
Acquisitions often create fragmentation across products, workflows, and data models. Teams must align platforms while preserving the capabilities users depend on.