Mezzanine stage
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Building digital products as a company of one
- Theme:Product building
- Topic:Strategy
- Topic:Independent
- Topic:AI
We’re told the same story: get funding, scale fast, and aim for the big exit. Christine's journey thrived when she stepped away from that pressure. Instead of chasing growth, she chose to stay small, focusing on organic growth, profitability, and independence. She found freedom, joy, and success by building and automating a UI Figma learning platform as a company of one. With today’s tools, automation, and AI, staying a company of one isn’t just possible—it’s a smart, financially sound choice. In this talk, she’ll bring you back to the joy and agency of building digital products on your terms.
Christine Vallaure de la Paz
Founder
moonlearning
Just... go for it!
- Theme:Product building
- Topic:Strategy
- Topic:Independent
We need more designers starting companies. This talk is meant to encourage others to make the leap, how designers are equipped to build durable businesses, and provide tactical approaches to navigating the founding journey.
Parteek Saran
Co-founder
Stealth
The space-filling curve of design
- Theme:Product building
- Topic:Web design
- Topic:Independent
- Topic:Typography
Helena makes a case for taking the scenic route to create a product with soul. Hear about the deep inspiration, design principles, and fluid collaboration that shaped Departure Mono.
Helena Zhang
Designer, Director, Writer
Independent
Building in public with Figma: designers should be creators
- Theme:Design craft
- Topic:Collaboration
- Topic:UX
- Topic:Research
Starting with a TikTok comment that sparked an app idea & launched to 70k+ users, Nolan built a process for designing, validating, and launching products through social media. Designers are poised to be build-in public creators like no one else. They can create engaging content that gets people excited, use their research skills to find out what the masses are REALLY saying & bring the designs to life for initial MVP launches. This talk will cover the story of TaskTree, an app that he designed & built during the pandemic. He'll walk through ways to grow an audience around products designers are making.
Nolan Perkins
Founder
Rad Collab
About the speakers
Christine Vallaure de la Paz
She/herFounder
moonlearning
Christine Vallaure is the founder of moonlearning.io, a platform that brings UX, UI Design, and Figma together with code. With experience working for top brands and startups in Berlin, Mexico City, and London, she now calls Madrid home. Christine is passionate about blending design and technology, inspiring designers and developers to collaborate better. Through moonlearning.io, she embraces solopreneurship, proving that staying small can lead to big success. A global speaker on design, code, and solopreneurship, she’s currently writing her first book, The Solo: A Guide on Solopreneurship.
Parteek Saran
He/himCo-founder
Stealth
Parteek is a designer based in New York. Currently he's starting up his next company. Very recently he helped lead design + product at Okta after they acquired his company Uno. Prior to Uno, he helped create Form, a design prototyping tool which was later acquired by Google. At Google, Parteek was a designer on the Material Design and Google Hardware teams. And in the much further past, he collaborated with Lady Gaga for her ARTPOP album. Outside of work, he enjoys riding bicycles around NYC and dabbling in improv comedy.
Helena Zhang
She/herDesigner, Director, Writer
Independent
Helena Zhang is a designer, director, and writer with 15+ years experience building products, brands, and teams. Most recently, she managed the design team at Medium. She’s passionate about bridging brand and product, and crafting primitives (like icons and fonts) for the industry.
Nolan Perkins
He/himFounder
Rad Collab
Nolan Perkins is a Lead Product Designer, content creator, and founder of Rad Collab. He’s spent over 14 years helping early-stage startups by bringing their ideas from 0 to 1. After building TaskTree by crowd-sourcing feedback through comments, Nolan has been on a mission to help startups connect their idea to the right audience by building in public on social media.