I enjoy ideating & building for underserved markets, and I’ve been lucky to work on a few interesting ventures during my time at UCL. Here are a few of my favourites:
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Brade: a plug-and-play accounting tool for salons and other beauty services. We built Brade to make reconciling multi-channel payments, forecasting finances and filing taxes 10x cheaper and 100x easier.
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Pubbler: a self-learning assistant specifically for Substack writers built on Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet model. Despite positive waitlist signalling, it didn’t feel right, and I decided not to launch.
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REN: a wearable ring for individuals struggling with addictions to discreetly seek help via touch sensor & BLE. REN was designed based on Prochaska and DiClemente’s transtheoretical model of behavioral change.
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Soundtrack: a ‘song a day’ social media platform based on the tried-and-tested streak model by BeReal. I advised Soundtrack on design, product and GTM.
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Banga: a WhatsApp booking agent for restaurants. Banga cut total booking time by 80% during testing – from initial message to email confirmations.
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Staycey: a swipe-to-book hotel search engine built on Booking.com and Expedia’s APIs. People really really (really) did not want this for some reason.
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Almanac: an AMA, Reddit-style forum for student-alumni networking & mentorship. I built this specifically for my alma mater, but it unfortunately didn’t materialise.
It’s uncertain why some of these didn’t succeed as expected. In some cases, it was simply a matter of inertia. In other instances, it’s quite possible we ‘overniched’ and were just 1-2 pivots away from getting it right. Nonetheless, the goal remains clear: building something valuable and scalable.