PhzMe · Early-Stage Marketplace Startup

Brand, product, and an investor-ready story for an early-stage startup

Chief Experience Officer · 2023-2025

PhzMe is an early-stage Los Angeles startup building a marketplace and community app for physical-media collectibles: VHS, vinyl, DVDs, and retro tech. I partnered directly with the CEO to shape brand, product, and the fundraising narrative.

CXOFounding exec

Brand0→1

MarketplaceExperience

InvestorNarrative

The Context

Vision into an experience investors could feel

An early-stage startup needed brand, product experience, and an investor-ready story, built quickly, working directly with the founder.

The challenge was to make the vision tangible across every touchpoint.

What I Did

Define the vision, build the experience

Partnered directly with the CEO to define vision, shape brand, and drive company-wide alignment
Owned brand identity, product experience, and motion, establishing a cohesive aesthetic across every touchpoint
Shaped the marketplace and community experience for buying, selling, and hunting rare and nostalgic physical formats
Led fundraising pitch development and investor storytelling, translating the vision into compelling narratives
Drove experience strategy across the full customer journey, building the brand promise into the product

The Build

From a template app to PhzMe in about five weeks

In August 2024 PhzMe hired an offshore development agency to rebuild the app on its marketplace platform. I led the design side, from choosing the partner to the App Store listing.

August, choosing the partner. I ran the design and customization questions across two long evaluation sessions, and joined a reference call with one of the agency's existing clients.
25 August, kickoff. I asked for the editable design files instead of a clickable prototype, and set up a working session to agree terms and definitions before any visual work started.
27 August, design strategy. I mapped every existing feature and the six kinds of people the marketplace had to serve: buyers, sellers, hunters, collectors, contributors and influencers, across individual and business accounts.
1 September, full team start. I asked for a defined onboarding process for the agency team, which became the shared Jira boards.
Late September, launch prep. Daily standups with the agency team. I owned the App Store screenshots and the interface decisions routed through design.
About 1 October, approved. Apple approved the iOS app about five weeks after kickoff, and it went into beta with more than 1,000 titles loaded.

Selected Work

Concepts and explorations

01 / 02

Brand and product

I owned the brand and the product experience. Identity, motion, the product surfaces that turned the marketplace into a community, and the visual language that reads as serious to investors and warm to collectors.

Brand & identityProduct experienceMotion

02 / 02

How the company runs

I built the Now, Next, Later framework that the company runs on. It sequences product decisions against capital, mile-marker investor moments, and the launch path. It is the operating cadence of the team, not just a roadmap layout.

Operating cadenceNow / Next / LaterRoadmap strategy

Impact

A brand and a story that could raise

Kickoff to App Store approval in about five weeks, with more than 1,000 titles loaded for beta
A cohesive brand and product experience across every touchpoint
A marketplace and community experience designed around a passionate niche
An investor-ready narrative that translated vision into traction

Brand StrategyProduct Experience0→1Fundraising NarrativeMarketplaceAdvisory

Before you hire anyone

Where does your design function actually sit?

Every engagement on this site began with the same question. The assessment scores you on two axes most read as one: how mature your design practice is, and separately how far your AI adoption has actually gone. About four minutes, and the full read comes by email.

Take the assessment