When the team splits
The fight about features is really about what the product is for.
Making things got cheap. Deciding what is worth making did not.
I help founders and small teams work out where AI changes their numbers, and where it doesn’t.
Right now I’m advising GrönLoop, a Swedish circular-economy startup.
I also teach and shape curriculum on the product design programme at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
I’m building Jon and BTO, and doing an Executive MBA with AI at Arden University, UK.
I’m most drawn to work around wellness, education, equality, kids and deep tech.
How can I help?
Most products don’t fail at the build. They fail at a decision made long before it, and that’s where I come in.
If one of these is your situation, tell me which one.
Move them around.
Before the build
You’re about to spend big, and nobody knows when it pays back.
With nobody to build it
You need a working version, not another document.
After it works
Nobody can say why anyone would pay for it.
A real example: advising GrönLoop
We built a product that works. Soon nobody will need it.
GrönLoop, a Swedish startup I’ve advised from the start, helps companies record and report their waste, as the law requires.
Before
Target
73
of 100 used it only to make their yearly waste report.
My advice
Don’t build another platform people have to log into. Put an AI agent at every handover that does the paperwork by itself.
AI makes a dashboard in minutes, but someone still has to do the paperwork at every handover.
My product
I’m building my own product too.
For my Executive MBA I wanted to learn efficiently, with methods that research backs. So I’m building Jon, a tool for learning in depth, where the AI never decides what you’ve learned. Six people now test it on their own material.
Teach-back
I’m a curious student. Explain the concept to me in your own words, and I’ll ask questions.
Statistics
- Correlation versus causation. I see it in papers all the time, but I couldn’t explain the difference. Can you?
- It’s when two things happen together, so one causes the other.
- Ice cream sales and drownings both rise every summer. Does one cause the other, or is something else behind both?
What I’m working on
Where my time goes right now.
I’ve advised GrönLoop from the start: I set up its first MVP and ran the pilots that validated the basics, and I advise on where the product goes next.
- Product direction and positioning
- What to build now and what to leave manual
- A two-track plan for revenue and long-term position
- Revised targets and a pricing approach
- Which regulations and partners the product has to fit
BTO, thesis defence grading at the Estonian Academy of Arts
Grading a thesis defence is usually a mess of paper sheets, private spreadsheets, and numbers reconciled after the fact. Evaluators can’t see where the committee stands, aggregates are calculated by hand, and the reasoning behind a grade is gone the moment the session ends. BTO replaces that with a single live system, still being built out.
- Product definition and scope
- Interface and interaction design
- Built and shipped on my own
- Real-time grading for the whole committee
- In use at the Estonian Academy of Arts
Building something deliberately unglamorous. Not the work that looks impressive in a portfolio, but the work people actually need. It pulls together everything I already do, and it gives me the freedom to choose the rest.
I’m working out what design education should be now that AI does much of the making. I build courses on the Academy’s product design programme and use them to test what holds. My research and writing are where I work out which part of design survives automation, and what has to change in how it is taught.
- Course design and curriculum
- Product design, portfolio and product management
- Admissions and thesis committees
- Mentoring
Get in touch
A product, a plan, or your next step. Let’s talk.
Taking new work from March 2027. Book a free call.Advice, building and mentoring, for founders, small teams and people working out their next step.
Move them around.
