Sam Nissinen

Kubo was an app that let users book fitness sessions on-demand with just a few taps. It has since been acquired by a private equity firm, primarily for the technology created.

My role was a mix of leadership and execution. I led and executed the creation of specifications, brand, wireframes, visual design, and interactions. I also sourced and vetted our partner agency who developed the Android version, while the iOS version was developed in-house. I collaborated closely with our CTO and the application was deployed successfully for both platforms after 3 months of development.

The Kubo application also won the 2016 App Design Awards in the Best App Startup category, beating over 700 entries including companies with tens of millions in funding.

Award page: https://drivenxdesign.com/APPS16/project.asp?ID=14723

Shebah is a ride-sharing platform in Australia designed for women. I was on this project from the very beginning till some months after the MVP launch and my primary responsibilities were leading product design, branding and executing UX design and key visual design.

I sourced most of the team to execute the project and communicated frequently with both the founder and our CTO.

The MVP was successfully launched and Shebah has since gone to raise millions in funding, still using the platform that was developed for their MVP.

Hypers prototyping and capital raise program is a 12-week program that was designed for founders in the idea stage to bring their idea to life, start validating it and ultimately raise seed capital to create an MVP.

I initially conceptualized the key elements of the program and did end-to-end execution until we had validated that the program works and has demand in the market.

I hired, trained and managed the design, operations, and marketing team which was partially on-site, and partially remote. The team was made up of UX/UI designers, project co-ordinators, ad specialists, and content creators.

I created structures that enabled us to understand resourcing needs to execute the program and trained team leads to offset some of the leadership overhead that came with growth.

In 1.5 years, I took the program from napkin notes to a packaged program with a full roadmap, accurate resourcing needs, educational components for the founders on the journey.

I also created a spreadsheet that allowed us to explore different financial outcomes based on decisions made around resourcing, included elements in the program, ad spend, cost per acquisition, and more.