Work with meClient workProjectsWriting

Find the signal. Inspire your team to act on it, creatively and decisively.

Strategy, product and investment decisions where the answer isn't obvious. I help you cut through the noise, widen the thinking, and get your team creating, not just agreeing.

I work with founders, executives and investors across strategy, business design and capital. Co-founded a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace; led business design at IDEO.

I invest my own capital in public equities and private companies, from their earliest days to pre-IPO. I advise startups.

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Two ways to work with me

A defined engagement

A question that needs research, design and a team working together. I lead a joint team with your people, from exploring the opportunity to developing and testing concepts. Where AI is useful, we apply the tools to a real workflow and help your team learn to use them.

A defined scope, with deliverables and timelines agreed before work begins.

Explore possible deliverables

Ongoing advisory

A thinking partner for strategy, product and investment decisions. Pressure-test an idea, untangle a strategy or sharpen the case you need to make. Work through where AI is useful and which tools fit the job.

A flat monthly retainer, agreed before work begins. Pause anytime.

See what we can work through

Viability first

I start with whether a solution can be financially viable. Then I look at technical feasibility: what would it take to build, and who can make it happen? Customer desirability is essential. It shapes what we test and develop, but it is not the only starting point.

The analysis gives us a commercial hypothesis, not proof of demand. Research and testing help us find out whether the opportunity holds up.

AI can help us prototype in hours. It does not settle why something should exist or whether the business works. As We Are All Editors shows through a worked example, the useful work is in refining the question, criteria and assumptions behind the output.

Technical capability alone does not tell us what people will choose. In When Taste Matters, I explore how taste, trust and identity matter as capabilities converge. Bringing customers and teams along takes judgment and an understanding of where people are starting.

What an engagement can produce

The question sets the scope. These are examples of the work we can agree to produce, not a fixed package or timeline.

  • A viability analysis

    A structured look at whether the proposed solution can work as a business. Make the commercial assumptions explicit and identify where a market opportunity may exist.

  • Research evidence and journey maps

    Fieldwork with customers, creators and experts, alongside a view of their experience. A basis for separating real needs from internal assumptions.

    In From Delay To Disclosure, I connect the design-research map of what people say, do, think and feel with how AI makes more of our thinking visible. The question remains: what evidence helps us understand someone real?

    Interview download - working wallView example
    Wisdom
    Interview download / working wall
    Hand-drawn portrait motif

    Keep the person in the room.

    Listen widely. Capture the range before deciding what it means.

    1 / 60
    Observations

    What the person said or did.

    Another observation, kept in context.

    Emerging insights

    What these observations might mean.

    Another interpretation to explore.

    Possibilities & questions

    A direction to keep open.

    What should we ask next?

    Diverge now, synthesize later

    Journey map - annotated workflowView example
    Wisdom
    Journey map / annotated workflow

    Follow the experience.
    Keep the evidence attached.

    01
    Stage A

    What the person is trying to do.

    02
    Stage B

    What the person does next.

    ?
    Decision point

    A consequential choice or transition.

    X
    Monitor

    What to watch after the change.

    01 + 02
    Evidence attached to stages A and B

    A relevant observation or insight, connected to its source.

    ? / Decision
    Evidence attached to the decision

    What makes this transition important to understand.

  • An AI-enabled workflow your team can use

    Choose a real task, apply suitable AI tools and work through the results with the people doing it. Hands-on learning helps the team understand how to use the tools, where their limits are and what still needs human judgment.

  • An opportunity presentation

    Commercial judgment and research insights brought together for your leadership team. A basis for debating which opportunities are worth pursuing and which assumptions still need testing.

  • Concepts and proofs of concept

    Product ideas or process improvements developed with your team and technical talent. Make the opportunity tangible, explore feasibility and test whether it meets a real customer need.

    Concept snapshot - evidence and ambitionView example
    Wisdom
    Concept snapshot / evidence + ambition

    See the idea.
    Judge what it asks of you.

    01Incremental

    Current capabilities, subject to buy-in.

    02Ambitious

    Stretch current capabilities.

    03Revolutionary

    May exceed capabilities or risk appetite.

    Viability

    Across all versionsThe value or operating rationale shared by all three versions.

    Incremental

    How this version creates value within the current business model.

    Supporting evidence / assumption / open question.
    Ambitious

    Additional value, commercial model or operating burden.

    Supporting evidence / assumption / open question.
    Revolutionary

    The larger value proposition and what must change to support it.

    Supporting evidence / assumption / open question.
    Feasibility

    Across all versionsThe baseline capability or dependency needed for the concept at every level.

    Incremental

    Existing capabilities, permissions and delivery needs.

    Supporting evidence / assumption / open question.
    Ambitious

    Capabilities that must stretch, plus the dependencies involved.

    Supporting evidence / assumption / open question.
    Revolutionary

    Missing capabilities, partners or infrastructure; possible hard limits.

    Supporting evidence / assumption / open question.
    Desirability

    Across all versionsThe human need or benefit the concept is intended to address.

    Incremental

    The immediate benefit and the evidence that supports it.

    Supporting evidence / assumption / open question.
    Ambitious

    The additional benefit proposed and what needs testing.

    Supporting evidence / assumption / open question.
    Revolutionary

    The larger benefit hypothesized and the uncertainty it introduces.

    Supporting evidence / assumption / open question.
    Ambition judgment: level or range, with rationale

    What do present capability and risk appetite allow? What needs testing or buy-in?

  • A shared design method

    A first sprint run with your leads, building a common project language around viability, feasibility and customer needs. Preparation for teams to lead further sprints themselves.

  • A joined-up view of the work

    Concepts from different teams brought together, with the organizational needs and internal and external communication considered. A basis for deciding how the work fits into the business.

    Programme outline - connected portfolioView example
    Wisdom
    Programme outline / connected portfolio

    Build understanding and support before rollout.

    Socialize the programme internally. Build awareness. Gain buy-in.

    Why this, why now

    Connect the programme to a need people recognize and the change it could make.

    Give people a reason to care.
    What it means for people

    Show who it is for, what happens and what would change in their work.

    Make it easy to understand and discuss.
    Where support is needed

    Surface concerns, invite changes and make the support or decisions needed explicit.

    Give stakeholders a way to shape and support it.
    Share the proposal → hear concerns → build support
    Feedback can still change the programme before rollout.

Throughout: involve the people who do the work, make the evidence visible, and test commercial assumptions alongside technical feasibility and customer needs.

Inside advisory

Ongoing context, rather than starting from scratch on each question. The work might be a clearer choice, an assumption to test or a stronger narrative for a board or investor conversation.

  • Should we build this?

    Start with the business model and commercial assumptions, then examine technical feasibility and customer need. Find a useful experiment before making the bigger bet.

  • Why isn't this strategy changing anything?

    Look at the choices, incentives and decision rights behind the plan.

  • Where would AI actually help?

    Work through the task, the tools and the trade-offs. Decide what is worth trying, what to leave alone and what your team needs to learn before relying on it.

  • What will the board or investors challenge?

    Pressure-test the logic, find the weak points and prepare the questions that matter.

Client work

Two examples of working with client teams to develop new parts of their businesses.

A global news and information publisher

London, New York, Asia

A four-phase engagement on the future of news, sponsored by the CEO. Eight of the publisher's executives - from marketing, operations, technology and finance - joined my design team. The outcome: a new internal division built on knowledge graphs, repurposing news and data across the business. Several team members were promoted off the back of the work.

The project team, in their own words.

One of Australia's most well-known brands

Australia

Commissioned by the CEO after the company's market value had fallen more than 90% in a decade, the ask was a growth story for its private-equity backers. Instead of designing for the company, we designed with it: the joint team focused on a growing segment, blue-collar tradespeople, and built a workflow app around how they work. The work outgrew the engagement - spun out as a subsidiary, with members of the client team joining and the sponsor putting money behind it. The useful answer was a product, not a presentation.

Current client work

Projects

Products and experiments of my own. A place to test ideas by building them.

Selected writing

Essays on judgment, technology and human behavior, from Pulp Conversations.

When Taste Matters

Why taste becomes commercially decisive when products converge on capability.

Read essay ↗

Invest Within Friends

What evidence should earn trust before friendship becomes a financial commitment.

Read essay ↗

Numb To Truth

An exploration of always-on memory, accountability and the gap between words and actions.

Read essay ↗

Explore all writing at Pulp Conversations ↗

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