Roundtable
Sep 12
10:40
50 min
Roundtable Room 2
About this Session
Designers often underestimate how well their skills translate into founding and building companies. In this roundtable, Jonny shares insights from his own journey as a designer turned founder, including the lessons learned while building and selling Progression, the world's first career pathway management platform. The discussion will explore how design thinking, user empathy and problem framing can give designers a unique edge when starting a business. Whether you're actively considering founding something or just curious, join Jonny and fellow designers to explore the opportunities, challenges and realities of the founder path.
Jonny is a designer, product wonk, founder and dedicated reader of the internet. Currently tinkering as Toy Studio, he was until recently the CEO of Progression, the world's first career pathway management platform. Progression was acquired in September 2024, and Jonny remains immensely proud of what the team achieved and pleased that the company is now in good hands.
Before Progression, Jonny led consumer design at Deliveroo [LON:ROO], powered over £1.8 million in donations for more than 300,000 NHS staff meals during Covid, helped build a children's bank that made headlines, published six issues and 15,000 copies of a sweary magazine for creative graduates (which his dad disapproved of), and organised a 30-day creative festival on a shoestring budget in the middle of Shoreditch. He also once interviewed Goldie and watched him chainsaw a tree, which was nice.
