Kong Konnect: Serverless Gateways

Designing a low-friction path to value, and a scalable foundation for growth, in Kong Konnect.

The Problem

90% of users failed to activate due to infrastructure blockers. 95% of ARR came from Sales. The product couldn’t scale through self-serve.

Outcomes

• ✅ +10% increase in traffic-sending orgs
• ✅ Improved retention and onboarding clarity
• ✅ Unlocked growth experiments and sales trials via self-serve
• ✅ Serverless Gateway became the foundation of PLG strategy at Kong

My Role

Led end-to-end design for Serverless Gateway and migration path. Collaborated with PM, Growth, Eng, and GTM teams.

What I Did

• Designed an instantly usable, no-setup gateway
• Created guided onboarding + smart defaults
• Scoped phased rollout and upgrade path to hybrid
• Balanced infra cost (cold-start recovery) with UX speed

This work raised the bar for onboarding by removing conceptual and technical friction. It scaled impact without increasing headcount.

Kong Konnect offers enterprise-grade API management—but setup complexity was blocking adoption. I led the design and rollout of Serverless Gateway, a fully managed experience that eliminated infrastructure as a prerequisite. It became the centerpiece of our product-led growth strategy, letting users connect in seconds and scale when ready.

Staff Product Designer – Growth @ Neon

I owned the end-to-end design strategy for Serverless Gateway—from initial concept to migration workflows. My goal was to unblock product-led growth by eliminating setup friction and delivering immediate value to new users.

Key Responsibilities:

• Defined the strategic vision for gateway onboarding within a product-led growth model
• Mapped user journeys and activation data to identify critical UX blockers
• Collaborated cross-functionally with Platform, Console, and Growth to align product vision and go-to-market goals
• Facilitated workshops to align engineering and product leads around gateway behavior and visual explanation
• Shipped production-ready UX for both onboarding and migration experiences
• Iterated on design system patterns to support new onboarding surfaces and hand-off experiences
• Established phased rollout plans and risk mitigation strategies with PM and Eng

Backed by funnel data, support tickets, and user interviews, I uncovered the core blockers to activation:

• Send API requests right after signup: Users expected to evaluate quickly—setup was a blocker.
• Get guidance, not architecture lessons: They needed help configuring services and routes, not understanding control planes.
• Explore safely without setup: Users wanted to try Kong in a secure environment without managing infrastructure.
• Know what comes next: They needed a clear path to scale when ready.

“I want to try Kong, but I don’t want to spend hours trying to set it up just to see what it does.”
– Kong Customer

If we remove the need to download the dataplane to try the features of Konnect gateway we will see more organizations experience the value of the product which we would measure as an increase in the activation and retention of new organizations.

To inform the strategy, I reviewed the onboarding experience of top API and developer tooling platforms—AWS, Google Apigee, Mulesoft, Tyk, Ngrok, Snyk, Readme, and Jira.

• Most assumed infrastructure readiness before gateway usage
• “Getting started” often meant provisioning, configuring, and reading dense documentation
• Few platforms allowed users to explore value without committing time or cloud resources

No one offered a fast, frictionless way to send traffic without setup. Serverless Gateway became Kong’s differentiator: meeting developers where they are, while giving them a path to scale.

Legacy Flow (Before SCGW)

1. Sign up
2. Create New Organization
3. Self-Managed Gateway provisioned
4. Provision + connect a dataplane 
   (CLI or cloud) ⚠️
5. Create service
6. Define route
7. Send API Request through Gateway

🔁 Each step was spread across Konnect, docs, and terminals.

Proposal: Serverless Gateway

1. Sign up
2. Create New Organization
3. Serverless Gateway provisioned
4. Create service + route
5. Send API Request through Gateway

✅ No Data Plane setup required — value in under 5 minutes

Clarifying what gateways do—and why that matters for onboarding

• Immersed in Kong’s gateway models (OSS, cloud, hybrid) to align user, growth, and platform goals
• Collaborated with Eng and PM leaders to define the simplest, most accurate visual model of a gateway
• Focused on helping new users grasp how traffic flows through services, routes, and plugins
• Balanced technical constraints with user guidance to shape a gateway experience built for instant value

I designed Serverless Gateway (SCGW) to radically reduce friction for new users:

• Provisioned and ready in <30 seconds
• No CLI or infrastructure setup required
• Built-in access to Kong Gateway plugins
• Konnect handled provisioning and placement transparently
• Cold-start recovery with idle shutdown to control cloud costs

This experience enabled users to evaluate core functionality instantly—sending real traffic through real routes without needing help.

Serverless was built for fast, low-friction onboarding—not production scale. I designed a clear path to help serious users grow.

Strategic UX moves:

• Surface upgrade guidance at usage limits
• Guide config handoff to hybrid gateways
• Support decisions with usage-based cost models

Serverless became a launchpad, not a limitation—helping users scale confidently when ready.