Dave Kearney

I build products that make a meaningful impact in the most efficient way possible. Strategy, roadmap, pricing, positioning and the hard calls about what not to build.

• Zero to scale. Took FluidUI.com from an idea to 25,000 customers in 130 countries, and Champion's Mind to the #1 sport psychology app in the world.
• Product strategy that moves numbers. Lifted sign-up conversion from 14% to 48% at Fluid, grew Abi 30% year on year into 48 countries and 27 languages, and generated €10M+ in net new recurring revenue at Modeva.
• Enterprise-grade delivery. Shipped AI products for AXA, Allianz, HSBC, Sanofi and Eli Lilly with the regulatory, security and procurement work that comes with them.
• Experiment-driven. A/B tests, cohort retention and pricing experiments over opinion. Read how I think about it in Building Exceptional Digital Products.

I'm a hands-on CTO. I still write code, I architect systems that stay cheap and stable at scale, and I've gone all-in on AI-native, agentic software development.

• AI-native development. As CPTO at Glitch Ads I run product and engineering for an AI-first martech platform and rebuilt the company website 80–90% faster using agentic workflows.
• Architecture that scales economically. Ran Fluid's infrastructure for 120k new users a month at a service cost under 1.8% of revenue.
• Full stack, many stacks. JavaScript, Node, Python, PHP, Swift, Dart and C/C++; Firebase, telecoms systems (IVR, SMPP), data and analytics platforms.
• Teams and quality. Grew Modeva's engineering team from 2 to 17 while cutting delivery cost by 25–30%, with QA and security strategy built in rather than bolted on.

I've been described by a former boss as the best UX designer in Europe, and while I didn't write the book on fixing bad UX, I did write the foreword. True story, you can buy it here.

• Built a design tool used by designers. Fluid UI was a mobile prototyping tool chosen by 25,000 teams, so the UX had to earn its keep every day.
• Design that drives retention. Champion's Mind holds a 4.8★ rating and its retention went from 14.9% to 30.3% through onboarding and habit-loop redesign.
• Research and prototyping. Rapid prototyping, usability testing and customer-feedback loops, written up for Startup Grind, VWO, AppFollow and SitePoint.
• Design systems at enterprise scale. Led UX across Abi's 27-language, 48-country product for Fortune 500 clients.

I've led teams for 20 years and I built the world's most used sport psychology app. They turn out to be the same discipline: performance comes from clear goals, deliberate practice, honest feedback and people who feel safe enough to push.

• Grown teams from scratch, repeatedly. Scaled Modeva's department from 2 to 17, building UX, development, QA and project management functions. Built and led design, development and QA at Fluid. Directed Abi's entire product department.
• Performance psychology, applied at work. Building Champion's Mind meant years inside the research on how athletes and coaches develop mental skills: goal setting, routines, imagery, composure under pressure. I run teams the same way, and I've written extensively on it.
• Outcomes over outputs. A team accountable for a business outcome must be free to choose how it gets there. I set the metrics and the levers, delegate inside them, and only step in when a number drifts.
• Change without drama. Led Modeva's move from Waterfall to Agile and introduced prototyping, Kanban, milestones and backlogs at Abi to speed delivery and improve communication across the company.
• Mentoring and pitching. Mentor to Trinity College student entrepreneur teams, startup mentoring at the London Sportstech Hub, Pearse Lyons and Ulster Bank accelerators, and corporate innovation contractor with Dogpatch Labs.

Culture is what a team does under pressure when nobody is watching. Sport worked this out long before software did, and most of what I know about building one comes from studying how winning teams train.

• Standards, not rules. Winning teams agree what good looks like and hold each other to it. I write the standards down, for design, code and support, and make the whole team their keeper rather than a manager or a QA gate.
• Deliver small, deliver always. If a team runs over often, a culture of non-delivery creeps in. I would rather cut scope than miss a sprint, so that finishing becomes the habit.
• Train the mental game. Athletes rehearse pressure before they meet it and review performance without blame. Teams can do the same: blameless retrospectives, honest one-to-ones and a shared language for pressure mean the group learns faster than any individual in it.
• Energy is a resource. Burnout is not commitment. I learned that the hard way, wrote it up in How I Failed the Company I Founded Last Week, and have protected recovery time for my teams ever since.
• People stay where they grow. Fluid ran a 24/7 service with a remote-first team for over a decade and kept its people. That comes from clear expectations, real autonomy and a friendly place to work.