The spine of Referna is
the next client.
The product keeps forgetting it.

A walk through the member journey, aligned around the next client. The onboarding section proposes a broader flow change. Elsewhere, real Today screenshots sit alongside Proposed screens — roughly 80% identical, with the spine-aligned 20% changed.

Every service has a spine — the one promise everything else must ladder up to.

"Figure out the spine of your service offering. Then check whether the product actually follows it — that's where most products fail."

The golden goose is the next client. Circles, matches, meetings, points — all of it is scaffolding. A member who sits through every ritual and never gets closer to a client has been failed, however good the meetings felt.

Recommendations, cohorts and meetings

The earlier concepts and source screens stay together here, with their original IDs and review comments. The updated chapter above guides the current direction where proposals differ.

The matches page — the card should show the path to your next client, not a person's bio

Today — real screenshot

Face, profession, timezone; the match reasoning collapsed under "More context." When client data is missing, the code invents a count ("12 of their clients match your ICP," hashed from the person's name).

Proposed — same card, 20% changed

The pills stay; the repeated text goes. One earned claim leads — "Connected to · seed-stage startups" — with real logos, no duplicated counts. CTA becomes "Meet Yaniv." Matching itself should rank by this same number: customers in the viewer's target market.

The expanded profile — same fix, one level deeper

Today — real screenshot

Four prose sections about the person — what I do, good referrals, bring me up when. All words, no evidence.

Proposed — same modal, 20% changed

Inside the card, right under the name: per-client rows — logo, company, employee count, funding stage, contact seniority ("knows the CEO"). Suggested-intro prose is gone. "4 more who fit your target market" replaces the vague "revealed after you meet."

The scheduler — booking a call is also the moment to earn it

Today — real screenshot

A calendar grid — pick a day, pick a slot. No context on why this meeting is worth either person's time.

Proposed — same picker, 20% changed

One short, specific prompt: "Ben looks for 20-person tech companies — name a few contacts." An autocomplete field resolves free text to real client chips (logo + name; id and domain stay hidden). "Autofill from my rolodex" pulls from the client list you already built.

Emails — fifteen recurring templates, zero client-led subject lines

Today — real template, real subject

"Your 3 new recommended peers on Referna are ready." Across the entire recurring set, no subject or opening line ever names a client. The highest-frequency surface sells membership upkeep.

Proposed — same template, 20% changed

The curiosity hook does the work: "Dana joined — she can connect you to 3 clients who fit your profile." A count, not names — stronger pull, zero data exposure. CTA: "Meet Dana."

The live meeting — the most spine-aligned surface we have. Keep it. Bank its output.

Today — real meeting room

The real two-person room: counterpart video, the five referral rounds. Gordy already runs the call at the client — but everything said here evaporates when the room closes.

Proposed — same room, 20% changed

The counterpart video is top-aligned with the checklist while the self feed stays below it; both remain the real room at its real size. The panel sits directly beneath the counterpart feed. Two boxes, "You mentioned · 2" and "Ben mentioned · 1," real logo chips, light border matching every other card on the page.

The weekly cohort session now turns the room into a live referral engine

Implemented in integration-2 — real live-meeting-agent screen

One member takes the stage while the room maps real companies against that member's client brief. Here, Adobe has already moved into Nina's client bucket — the referral round is now a working interaction, not another item on the agenda.

The recap email — clients are mentioned, then buried in prose

Today — the real recap email

The recap already contains clients — "He mentioned working with Elementor and a seed-stage insurtech" — as sentences in a story. Nothing is extracted, counted, or followed up.

Proposed — same recap, 20% changed

Split by who said it — "You mentioned · 2" and "Ben mentioned · 1" — each as logo chips. Promises get one-tap follow-through, extracted from the full transcript after the call, where detection is reliable.

The meetings page — recaps that hide the clients they contain

Today — real screenshot

Recaps with per-topic checkmarks. The clients discussed are in the prose — never extracted, never visible at a glance.

Proposed — same page, 20% changed

Same split as the recap email — "You mentioned" and "[Name] mentioned" side by side, same chip style used everywhere else in the deck. The meetings page becomes a ledger of client discovery, not attendance.

The cohort roster — an attendance sheet that should be a referral market

Today — real screenshot

"Meet whoever looks interesting." Cards show photo, profession, and how often you've met — no reach signal anywhere, no summary of what the room is worth.

Proposed — same roster, 20% changed

A summary bar leads the page — "47 companies this cohort can reach · 13 seed-stage, hiring their first PR lead" (the viewer's actual criteria, not a placeholder). Every card carries real logos and the same framing: "Reaches N companies at <their stage or trigger>."

Click a logo — the company becomes a shared record

Proposed — new capability

Clicking any logo opens a collaborative CRM entry for that company: size, ownership, who in the circle knows them and in what role, and freeform notes members leave for each other — "Evaluating a new CRM vendor as of last week." One tap asks the connector for an intro.

The circle page, pre-circle — where most members actually are

Today — real screenshot (member with no circle)

"People You've Met" cards push one ask — "Set Inception Meeting" — a governance step, before any value has been shown.

Proposed — same page, 20% changed

A summary bar leads: "20 clients mentioned across your 1:1s · 8 fit your target" — this is what your calls have already surfaced, not a made-up pipeline. Each met person shows their client list; the main action becomes "Offer rolodex sharing."

The cohort page, before you're even in one

Today — real screenshot (member with an open seat)

"The Executive Coach seat is open." One column, one claim: headcount and price. Nothing about who is in the room.

Proposed — same panel, 20% changed

Two columns inside the same bordered panel — no box inside a box. Left: the existing offer. Right: "Reaches 47 tech clients today" with real logos, so the room's value shows before you take the seat.

The cohort seat promo — "20 peers" is weaker than what they can reach

Today — real screenshot

"20 peers who serve the same customers you do." A headcount claim — how many people, not which clients.

Proposed — same page, 20% changed

Each cohort card carries its own logos — not a shared block above both. Hebrew reaches Wix and Cyabra; English reaches monday.com and Gong. Each room is sold on the clients actually in it, not a generic claim applied to both.

Referral is the opposite of pipeline.
Count reach, not follow-ups.

Pipeline is managing people who came to you at the wrong time. Referral is having people who know exactly when to send you someone ready to buy.