April 2022
London Studio, Photo Walks, Apps and Twitter
Hello, everyone! Last month was quite busy, but in the second part, I could focus on work and pull some extra tasks to preserve my future growth. So here’s a small sneak peek at my progress:
London Design Studio
I officially registered Super Clear, and we’re ready to take clients. I used several projects from my past to fill up the portfolio, but hopefully, I will be able to populate it with new projects very soon. Besides projects, I’m looking for design/developer partners (DM me!). We already have quite a few promising leads we’re going to work with!
Photo Walks
Once I arrived in London, I immediately bought a bag of expensive camera gear: Leica M, Summicron 35, Summilux 50, Summicron 90, and a mix of diffusion/polarizing filters. Finding new friends and going for a Sunday photo walks really helped me unwind my brain and forget about the cruel world for an hour.
I publish more photos on Unsplash and Instagram.
💰 Startup Advising
Many people asked me about this. I consult startups, and I have a new startup in my advising flow. I will not cover the startups yet, but I want to cover how I charge them because this seems like an interesting model to build long-term wealth.
What I do is I offer startups my presence during their decision-making meetings, and I help them navigate, see common mistakes, spot the spaces in models and offer solutions on how to solve them. I’m not speaking only; most of the time, we work in design tools too! So I usually offer several packages. Important to note: they’re always early-stage startups, pre- or seed-stage.
Monthly Presence (0.5-1%)
Weekly Presence (2-2.5%)
Continuous Design Support (5% and higher)
Product / Design Position (7.5-10% + cash compensation)
This is not final or uniform for all situations. That’s the start of the negotiation, and it depends on the startup’s and founder’s maturity. I also offer free single consultations for teams, and it works really great to make new friends!
App of the Month
For work purposes, I install nearly 50 apps every month. I test them, look up the team, and search for their LinkedIn profiles to see who’s building what and why. I decided to share and promote the unpopular apps and services I enjoyed or found innovative. They’re not sponsored.
Super Agent for Safari — automatic cookie consent. Once I moved to the UK, the cookie experience was crazy — popups are everywhere, in different designs, blocking content and breaking sites. Accept buttons are different shades, in different corners. It’s really hard to focus on the content.
Super Agent basically auto-clicks the “Block” or “Accept” button for you. Of course, messing with JavaScript breaks things sometimes, but you have an opportunity to experience a cleaner web! Super recommended!
Concept
Speaking about cookies… Let’s fix them? I find the current solution very troubling and unintuitive. No one outside tech knows what a cookie is, right? Heck, even I don’t have a full understanding of cookie technology. And the name explains nothing. Have you tried to explain to your parents what a cookie is?
I wish we could make cookie preference native and explain to users the implications of it.
Twitter
I like Twitter because it connects me with amazing founders, designers, and developers who regularly post fun and useful stuff. I think it has perfect balance compared to other social networks. Last Wednesday, I was in London’s Twitter office. I was amazed by the API possibilities for the developers and founders. Twitter buys third-party companies, that care about making the Twitter experience better, and I can definitely see the bright future!
DM me if you want to build something for Twitter. I have a couple of ideas too 😅