For the last three years I have worked at Cuvva, helping to achieve the company's mission of giving everyone affordable access to a car anytime, anywhere by making cars multiplayer.
Before that I was at Activate helping non-technical founders with industry knowledge to go from idea to launched MVP and beyond.
Alongside these I've been building, launching and growing my own digital products, as well as a little freelancing.
Next step? I would love to join the team at Founders Factory to work with founders and turn early-stage ideas into high-growth startups.
Aaron Butler
Aaron Butler
0→1 Product Designer & Builder
Layla, The Seam
Beniamino, Good Morning Italia
Fiona & Christine, Smash
Gus & Fahad, Tomo
Freddy, Cuvva
Some of the incredible founders I've worked with along the way
Sam, Tailwise
Kim, isoshealth
Laurence, Oscar & Eamon, Splitzy
Dean, Playerstate
Harvir, Doyenne
Some of the incredible founders I've worked with along the way
Freddy
Cuvva
Layla
The Seam
Beniamino
Good Morning Italia
Fiona & Christine
Smash
Gus & Fahad
Tomo
Sam
Tailwise
Kim
Isoshealth
Laurence, Oscar & Eamon
Splitzy
Dean
Playerstate
Harvir
Doyenne
Experience
Indiehacking
Building things
2020 - Forever
I solemnly swear that I am up to no git. Okay that's a lie. Having got a real taste of turning an idea into a product-led business during my time at Activate, I could think of nothing else but to build and launch my own.
See more about my side projects
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Cuvva
Making cars multiplayer
2021 - 2025
Building on the success of the short-term car insurance product; Cuvva's founder, Freddy, has a vision to achieve this ambitious mission by making cars multiplayer. Sole Product Designer working in teams dedicated to realising this vision.
See more about my work at Cuvva
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Splitzy (Freelance)
Splitting made easy
2024 - 2025
The Splitzy founding team approached me as they completed their pre-seed round with a dream of becoming the go to destination for organising and collecting money from a group of people for an event or shared expense.
I helped them work through establishing who their target user is and what their most important jobs, pains and gains are, before creating wireframes and high-fidelity deliverables for their mobile app MVP.
Also put together their basic branding, marketing assets and built their initial landing page.
See more about my work with Splitzy
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Activate
From idea to MVP
2018 - 2021
Product Designer in a startup studio that helps non-technical founders with industry knowledge to go from idea to launched MVP and beyond.
Owned designs from idea to MVP and beyond across multiple fledgling startups. Facilitated value proposition design workshops and design sprints.
Product Manager for our internal product that managed applications from founders to join the studio.
See more about my work at Activate
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Market Gravity (Summer Intern)
Intra-preneurship through proposition design
2016
Worked with Bupa to generate new ideas for new offerings outside of their core Private Medical Insurance product. Helped out with customer research and co-creation sessions (where we worked with people who did or didn't have private medical insurance to generate ideas).
Produced pitch deck slides, mockup ads, illustrations, animations, video summaries and landing pages in a bid to help the team get approval from Bupa leadership to continue to pursue these ideas.
Loughborough University
BA Industrial Design & Technology
2013 - 2017
Optional modules: UX Design, Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Articles
Occasionally I decide to write about things I've learned along the way, or something that has infuriated me enough to cause me to redesign it. Some of my articles have been featured in Mobbin's Weekly Update and TLDR's Design newsletter (going out to over 300,000 people).
Indiehacking
Building things
Having got a real taste of turning an idea into a product-led business, I could think of nothing else but to build and launch my own. Here's a list of products I've built and some that are in the works.
Epic Baby Names🚧
With hundreds of names from Homer's epic poems, you'll never have to call your kid Michael or Samantha ever again.
Cuvva
Making cars multiplayer
Cuvva's mission statement is to give everyone affordable access to a car anytime, anywhere.
Building on the success of the short-term car insurance product; Cuvva's founder, Freddy, has a vision to achieve this ambitious mission by making cars multiplayer.
This side steps the need to add thousands of cars to Britain's roads and instead focuses on making better use of the many cars which are often sat idle.
Given that the existing short-term car insurance product often caters to people borrowing a car from someone that they already know (Mum's car to nip to the shop, your cousin's more comfy saloon for a long drive, a mate's van to move house), one of our focus areas was to grow these behaviours by resolving sharing pain points and providing a smoother experience.
After gathering new data and looking at existing data with this existing user base using surveys and user interviews, we collated the findings and identified key problems that users face with access, ownership, and lending their car.
We then went on to ideate on solutions to these problems, and created a business model canvas to test the viability of the solution.
The team ideated on "how can we help to give everyone affordable access to a car anytime, anywhere?" and arrived at four concepts:
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Splitzy
Splitting made easy
The Splitzy founding team approached me as they completed their pre-seed round with a dream of becoming the go to destination for organising and collecting money from a group of people for an event or shared expense.
To help the team narrow down the scope of their MVP, we went through a series of exercises to understand who they envisioned as their users, and determine the key problems they have with organising events and collecting money that we wanted to tackle first.
Given the founding team were mostly undergraduates, they decided to lean on their advantages and focus on fellow students.
After chatting with fellow students and using anecdotal evidence of their own, we arrived at a few scenarios as archetypes for this different type of splitting that they wanted to help out with.
We arrived at four different use cases we wanted to account for:
- Fixed (you know the exact amount of money and people—e.g. dinner)
- Variable (same cost per person but unsure of number of people—e.g. booking tickets to an event)
- Open (pay what you want—e.g. collecting for a gift)
- Multiple expenses (effectively a tab that can have multiple expenses by different people—e.g. booking a holiday)
Having arrived at the scope of the MVP, I created wireframes to show the experience that we wanted to create to cover these core use cases.
Venture design exercises to help the team understand their target user, jobs, and pains
Wireframing the core flows to tackle our target users' more important problems
Having iterated on the wireframes using feedback from the founding team and their friends, it was time to bring the app to life.
We worked through a few cycles of iterations before landing on something that the team really enjoyed.
The team also wanted a placeholder website for them to ensure they could begin to create hype and capture a list of people who were interested in the product when it went live.
Splitzy launched in the autumn of 2024 and has been growing on campuses throughout the country, starting with an epicentre at the University of Leeds.
Since the launch, I have supported the team with some marketing materials as well as concept designs; to bring to life the team's vision for growing into a B2B product as they put their pitch deck together for their next fundraising round.
Activate
From idea to MVP
Activate is a startup studio that helps non-technical founders with industry knowledge to go from idea to launched MVP and beyond.
Once or twice a year we would open applications. When a founder has been selected, we would help them to refine their business idea, define their target user, create a prototype, and start validating their key business hypotheses.
Facilitating a business model Workshop whilst working with early-stage startups at Activate
If the business case seems sound, we would help them prepare their pitch deck for their first round of funding and make initial introductions to investors.
After the funding is secured, Activate would become the founding technical team—building and launching their MVP to get them to market. Ideally, the business then grows out from there, building their own tech team and becoming self-sustaining.
