Department built.
Three designers working one-on-one with founders became a nine-person design discipline across five fintech ventures. Structure first, headcount second, then a hiring bar: 212+ interviews, six hires.
- Role
- Head of Design
- Reported to
- VP of Product
- Team
- 3 → 9 designers in 16 months
- Scope
- 5 fintech ventures + studio, one venture builder
- Hiring
- Leads and seniors only · 212+ interviews
- Context
- Company grew from 38 to 180 people
- −30%Cycle time on design epics, start to dev-ready (Jira)
- 4→6Team satisfaction on a 1–7 scale, first survey vs. full team
- ✓BeOne banking licence granted, with design fully prototyped up front
Three designers, no department.
The company grew from 38 to 180 people. Design didn't grow with it. Three designers worked one-on-one with venture founders: no career framework, no principles, no objectives, no feedback loops, no shared communication and a disjointed design system.
Design reported into founders with no ownership model, so designers had little room to own decisions or be accountable for them.
Structure first. Headcount second.
Everyone wanted more designers. I started with a diagnosis instead: a Design Leadership Framework analysis across strategy, experience, operations, team and enterprise, to decide what to build first.
Then a skills framework, and a map of every venture against it: who we had, what each venture actually needed, where the gaps were. Some designers were UI-strong, others UX-strong, and every venture was missing something. Only then did we open headcount, against those gaps.
What I chose, over what.
| I chose | Over | Because |
|---|---|---|
| A hybrid org: a designer per venture, shared UX writing and growth | One designer per venture for everything | Five ventures couldn't each afford a full set of specialists |
| A UX-led dual track, handing over between the two diamonds | A classic double diamond or a Stingray model | A venture builder needs results fast and had no time mapped for design thinking |
| Leads and seniors only | Faster hiring with mid-level generalists | Five ventures needed people who could run without me in the room |
| Structure before hiring | Opening headcount straight away | New hires would have landed in the same chaos |
How I built the team.
- Hiring bar
I interviewed 212+ people to hire six. Senior, to me, means you set the direction yourself and pull me in at the handoff, not at every step.
I hired deep specialists or true generalists. Most candidates sat in the middle.
- Org model
A product designer embedded in each venture, with UX writing and growth shared across startups. UX went first to map the problem; UI ran in parallel on style and components, then took over for delivery.
- Ways of working
Rituals the team kept: a meeting-free focus day, a weekly kickoff, a design council for critique, a quarterly retro and learning hours. Designers moved into planning instead of receiving tickets.
- Upward
The dual-track model made design's stages, and where the skills sat, visible to leadership. That gave designers room to own decisions instead of taking them from founders.
Delivery 30% faster. Licence granted.
Cycle time on design epics, from start to dev-ready, dropped 30% in Jira. Team satisfaction rose from 4 to 6 on a 1–7 scale, measured when I joined and again once the full team was in place. Headcount tripled only once the structure could absorb it.
BeOne needed a banking licence, and to get it every feature in scope had to be shown as a working prototype with real banking detail, before any code existed. The team designed the whole product up front, and the licence was granted.
What I'd do differently.
I'd work on leadership alignment from day one and keep at it the whole time.
