I like to use my imagination to solve problems in exchange for money.
I build startups from scratch inside Founders Factory, one of Europe's leading venture studios. Over eight years I've generated dozens of venture concepts, validated them through real-world experiments, and helped launch companies that went on to raise external venture capital. Some are still growing. A few didn't work. One involved cats.
Each of these started as a blank page. My job was to find the problem, validate that someone would pay to solve it, design the product, and build enough to prove it could work.
A protocol layer connecting AI agents to legacy insurance systems. Three pathways: A2A translation for mainframes, embedded generative UI checkout with FCA compliance, and headless APIs for agent-first quoting. Built with Aviva.
Family-powered mortgage and savings platform helping first-time buyers boost their budget and get on the ladder. Started as a venture concept with Aviva; now the biggest raise in the portfolio.
The world's first flight-free holiday platform. A dynamic trip builder that lets travellers create personalised overland holidays across the UK and Europe — ABTA-protected, no flying required. Series A oversubscribed.
Token-gated membership platform for artists. NFT and social token-based memberships with exclusive perks. Pivoted toward fan microsites and data capture for independent musicians.
Open banking-connected platform for landlords. Automatically monitors rent collection, reconciles transactions, and produces draft property tax statements. Launched the first FCA-regulated current account for landlords.
Venture design is not ideation. It's a structured way of killing bad ideas quickly and giving good ones the evidence they need to survive.
Start with a market, not a solution. Interview real people. Map where money is being wasted, time is being lost, or pain is being tolerated. The opportunity lives in the gap between what exists and what should.
Design experiments that test the riskiest assumptions first. Landing pages, concierge MVPs, fake doors, Wizard-of-Oz prototypes. Spend days, not months, learning whether anyone actually wants this.
Design and ship something real. Not a pitch deck — a product. Enough to get paying users or enough evidence to raise a round. Then hand it to a founding team who can take it further than I can.
Lead the design and validation of new ventures across sectors including health, climate, education, fintech, and consumer. Work with corporate partners to identify venture opportunities at the intersection of corporate assets and unmet market needs. Responsible for taking concepts from blank page to funded startup.
Strategy, UX, and creative work for brands including Nike, Rolls-Royce, and Google. Learned how large organisations think about product, experience, and innovation — then went somewhere smaller to actually do it.
Design and strategy roles across agencies and in-house teams. Figured out what I was good at. Figured out what I wasn't. Both were useful.
