Podme
Podme
Podme, part of the Schibsted group, was entering a new phase of scale.
As Design Lead, I built the design maturity required to support that scale — shaping product strategy, establishing systems and partnering with leadership to steer the organisation toward sustainable growth.
Role
Design Lead
Partners
CPO/ CTO · Product Managers · Engineering Leads
Focus
Product strategy · Design systems · Discovery · Design maturity at scale
Timeframe
2023 - 2025
When I joined, Podme had strong momentum but limited strategic clarity. Growth had begun to slow, decision-making was largely top-down, and design had limited influence over long-term direction.
The product roadmap prioritised delivery, but lacked a shared view of where future value would come from.
Working closely with executive leadership, I helped define a clear north star and a multi-year product strategy. The focus was on aligning short-term delivery with long-term value, and making trade-offs explicit as the organisation scaled.
A central shift was moving Podme from a podcast-first service to a broader audio platform.
Audiobooks became a deliberate strategic expansion rather than a feature experiment. The work focused on understanding where long-form audio fit into users’ daily routines and how it could strengthen retention and willingness to pay.
Design played a key role in shaping this direction — connecting user needs, commercial intent and product execution into a coherent platform offering.
In parallel, I focused on raising Podme’s design maturity. This included hiring and mentoring designers, establishing design operation and improving collaboration across product and engineering.
The emphasis was on clarity and judgment — building systems and ways of working that reduced friction and supported better decision-making at scale.
