Shortening the Distance to Regret
*When "It'll Be Fine" Is the Most Expensive Phrase on Your Roadmap*
Simon Carney
Founder, Principal UX Strategist
I help founders find what's wrong before they burn another dollar on the wrong fix.
Who I am / What I do
I've worked for everyone from Zip2 and AOL/Netscape to Nokia, Microsoft, Capital One, and Bayer. I've been around since the beginning, through every wave of what the internet became.
I've been on both sides of this. Inside the big product organizations, founders are trying to sell into. Then as the person brought in to fix what went wrong, and also as the leader who had to figure out why smart teams kept stalling.
That's the conversation I'm good at. Now I help people figure that out before they burn runway on the wrong fix.
Why Most Startups Aren’t Building Companies … Because They’re Building Exit Strategies
Where organizations once built internal R&D capabilities and developed solutions from the ground up, leadership now scans the horizon for acquisition targets. We’ve created the private equity version of R&D — and it’s far messier than anyone admits.
We Built the Algorithmic Economy, and Now It’s Pricing Us Out
Uber users who load gift cards sometimes get higher fare quotes for the same route. I’ve designed parts of this machine — and I can tell you exactly how we got here, and what it means that UX designers became accidental architects of systems that work against the people using them.
Why Real UX Leadership Means Ignoring Your First Idea
The job isn’t to polish the obvious — it’s to push past it, and teach your team to do the same. First ideas feel good because they come quick and feel familiar. That’s exactly the danger. Most first ideas aren’t wrong: they’re just unfinished.
