Your early designers do more than shape your product, they set the foundation for how design drives impact at your company.
You’ve made great hires—well done! Now, as your startup scales, how do you ensure design keeps up? Growing teams, scaling quality, and influencing strategy require a shift to balance immediate execution with long-term impact. With the right support, you can strengthen hiring, improve retention, and amplify design’s role in building a successful product and business.
That’s where I come in.
Hi, I’m Tom. I’ve spent 20 years in product design, in London and New York, with 10 years in leadership roles including the last 5 as Director of Product Design at Monzo. I’ve worked at startups, scaleups and household names, building the expertise needed at growth-stage inflection points while seeing firsthand the risks of not embedding design as a leadership pillar from the start.
Together, we’ll close that gap, helping design become a strategic advantage, not just an execution function.
I blend coaching, strategic guidance, and async support to help your design team perform at their best. As a trusted partner with deep context on your company, I can coach your designers, shape strategic decisions, and help de-risk product choices, in partnership with a Head of Design or independent of them. This gives you the benefit of senior design leadership, without over-hiring too soon, so you can build a strong design foundation that drives impact now and in the future.
One hour a week
→ Or four hours a month, used however you like.
→ Plus ongoing async feedback.
After months of trial and learning, this rhythm has emerged as the sweet spot. It gives us enough structure to build real momentum, while staying flexible to what’s most useful week-to-week, whether that’s joining a design critique, shaping a hiring plan, or jamming on product strategy. This format also helps me plug into your broader team and context, not just 1:1s.
While I operate best as a long-term partner, typically to the person leading Product or Design, I know how things shift with funding cycles and focus. So I work on a monthly retainer you can pause or stop anytime. No hard commitments.
Retained clients also get priority access to limited hands-on execution, when deeper project-based involvement is needed.
Pricing depends on startup stage and size, but is usually in the range of £1–2k/month.
If you want to build a world-class product design team and culture from day one, I’d love to chat.
We’ll discuss your challenges and, if there’s strong potential, schedule a free 60-minute session to work through a real design, hiring, growth or strategy challenge together, to see whether there's a fit. I look forward to meeting you.