Hi, I'm Matt Shannon
I’m a design led product leader with over twenty years experience helping business harness design to ship innovative, high-growth, user-centred products and services.
During that time, I’ve held a variety of roles, giving me the opportunity to shape and use design to spot opportunities, solve hard problems and produce high-quality work at zero-to-one startups searching for fit (DriveTribe, Record-os, Growth Street, We Are Pop Up), fast-moving scale-ups looking for growth (Personio), and everything in-between, including consultancies (Spotless, CX Partners, Fjord) government (Department for Transport), and corporates (Rightmove, Sopra Steria)
I put collaboration, research, and healthy questioning at the heart of my approach, and when combined, believe they enable design and product teams, and those around them, to do their best work while being enjoyable, rewarding, and sustainable long term.
Selected Work
"Established design-led approach for AI-first fintech, from discovery to MVP”
As the first product design hire, I supported first time founders to shape the product direction through user research, vision prototyping, and in close collaboration with engineers ship an MVP in just three months.
“Onboarding Personio’s highest value customers in days rather than weeks”
At Personio, I supported the Head of Payroll to lead discovery and design of self-service onboarding for their flagship German payroll product. Utilising both tactical and long-term approaches, I collaborated with product, operations and engineering to improve in-progress customer onboarding by 10% month-on-month and set a strategic direction for the long term that will allow onboarding in days rather than weeks.
“What steps should we take to mature the product team?”
Starting in spring 2023 and reporting to the CEO, I joined Sensate to support the team in improving their product practice.
“How do we provide the customer support our users need?”
I was hired by the Head of Internal Product to shape and validate a new, customer-focused approach to customer support, that would improve QOS, security and capacity, without increasing department size.
“How can we improve our support for LSE’s entrepreneurs?”
After several years of organic growth, LSE Generate required a programme refresh and rethink of its startup accelerator and operations.
I joined as Chief of Staff, reporting to the Head of Department, leading the change programme over six months.
“How do we bring three different teams together to collaborate?”
A collaboration with the DfT Product Owner, I joined after a successful discovery phase to lead a cross-functional product team design and build Street Manager, a £10m transformation project that launched successfully in 2020.
“What do creators need from a new social network?”
I was hired pre-launch, reporting to the CEO to lead early-stage product validation and development of a creator-centric backlog.
“How can we help our customers improve how they think about cash flow?”
I was hired by the Head of Product to lead the research and development of two new products that help customers monitor their credit position and make informed borrowing decisions.
“How do we create a marketplace that works for different brands and landlords?”
I joined as the first Head of Product to establish the product practice, grow the marketplace and support A-round fundraising.