We founded Project Imagine with an ambitious vision of creating a bank built on an ethical business model: one that aligned its balance sheet to customers’ needs by monetising wealth creation first, (lending second).
Dozens was the go-to-market brand that brought this mission to life
As CXO and co-founder, I led across product design, creative direction, customer experience, and collaborated with the leadership team on strategy, operations, and culture.
Helping people go from spender, to saver, to investor
Supporting them throughout their financial life
Understand spending habits
A full-featured Current Account with rich spending insights including with Google Maps integration and happiness ratings
Budget month-to-month without slipping into overdraft
Set a budget and track it closely. The daily budget dynamically adjusts according to progress so far.
Save more
Set up regular savings, round-ups or and create event-driven savings rules with triggers ranging from “save every time I visit the gym” to “save every time it rains." All savers became part of a monthly cash giveaway prize-draw.
Earn decent interest
For generation that didn't know what it felt like to earn interest, our proprietary 5% p.a. fixed interest bonds were revolutionary
Start investing
A straightforward, swipable risk assessment, then thematic portfolios (clean energy, robotics) that encourage a long-term investment horizon.
“In an increasingly competitive market, you'd better be a game-changing product if you're going to launch a new challenger bank.
And that's just what Dozens is… a gamechanger"
— Startups100 Awards, 2019
Business snapshot
Regulation & products.
Dual-licensed by the FCA (e-money + MiFID). Issued our own debit cards. Launched a 5% fixed-interest bond. Processed £300m+ in customer transactions. Reduced fraud to 0.1%.
Core banking platform.
Built our own event-streaming, cloud-native core with seamless third-party orchestration, AI-ready data, and 99%+ uptime — with ~40% of costs recognised as R&D.
Ethical governance.
Embedded ethics into operating systems and decision-making. Became one of the first B-Corp-certified financial institutions in the UK.
Crisis stewardship.
Protected the team through Covid and the Wirecard fallout. Later delivered the UK’s first solvent wind-down of a dual-licensed fintech in close collaboration with the FCA.
My personal journey with the business
Back towards the end of 2017, I was approached to be on the founding team of a startup. There was no registered company, no office, and just a verbal promise of a small seed fund. But the idea was audacious: turn the banking model on its head and build a bank that grows when its customers do, rather than profiting when they struggle. As someone who was still angry at how ordinary people paid the price for the 2008 financial crisis, I was well up for shaking things up. People on the ground need a bank that genuinely works in their interest.
Building a fintech from scratch is the biggest blank page I've ever been faced with
I joined bringing my background in advertising, shaping the mission as a brand and ensuring that brand lived deep within the product and the business. My initial title was VP Storytelling (a title so “startup” I’ll never live it down with my friends).
Within a few weeks, I’d built an internal creative team across design, writing, illustration, and community management, and engaged external delivery partners.
My team became adept at navigating regulatory constraints. Before receiving our FCA licences, we couldn’t mention our offering publicly. Despite that, we launched a campaign that talked about the industry rather than ourselves. #QuestionYourBank was concepted, written, animated, and voiced entirely in-house, getting over 100k views and 5k waitlist signups to a service we weren’t even allowed to describe.
We kept producing campaigns that challenged and punched above their weight/media budget, driving 120k downloads and a CAC of <£5 through rigorous testing.
Advertising campaigns
We worked with a 300-person co-creation community to understand real financial lives and shape the product and services with them. Over time, I built a range of research spaces. Alongside the #WeAreDozens community, we launched a pop-up branch with Westminster Council to explore what a bank could offer on a modern high street. We also toured the UK with The People’s Money Survey, gathering on-the-road insights that directly informed product and policy conversations inside the business.
I managed the customer comms ecosystem — website, onboarding, card packaging, and continuous engagement — maintaining regulatory records on financial promotions throughout. We turned moments of financial learning into relationship-building. Our education content increased understanding and uptake of new products, leading to $3.4m+ invested in our bonds, with one in four bond holders then going on to invest in ETFs
As my experience across product, tech, and the wider business grew, I took on the role of CXO and the product design remit with it. I led the product strategy and design of Organix, our internal platform, and the 2.0 version of the Dozens app, while continuing to oversee improvements to the 1.0 version.
Throughout, as part of the leadership team, I set strategic direction and prioritisation, made hard calls, and navigated external shocks. I looked for ways to capitalise on our assets by productising our experience through Organix and Mojo. I raised funds by running our crowdfunding campaign (Seedrs’ biggest raise in 2019) and pitched in Hong Kong and the US.
I helped build a culture that made ethics part of the business rather than just marketing, through initiatives like our Values × Performance Matrix and Yellow Card system. We ran regular company and team off-sites, social events, and open forums to sustain morale and connection — especially during difficult moments like Covid and the eventual wind-down.
When we decided to wind down the licence, I led the customer-facing communication strategy: crafting clear, supportive messages, coordinating FAQs with compliance, and ensuring support channels were ready for customers seeking guidance. After operational closure, I worked with the leadership team to explore asset sales, partnership opportunities, and ways to preserve the most valuable parts of the platform and team.
Vibes
There’s so many things that will never make it into a case study or packaged into a LinkedIn post.
It was tough. Joyous. Heartbreaking and rewarding. All at the same time.
Would I do it all again?
For the right cause – hell yeah!
