A concierge for personal development.
The founder had a conviction and a name. My job was to turn it into something you could see — a tangible product and a story sharp enough to show what "Airbnb for transformational experiences" actually looked like.
What Onswell is, and my role in it.
Turning a founder's conviction into something you could actually see.
A founder had a conviction — that travel could be a vehicle for personal growth, not just leisure — and a name: Onswell. What he didn't have yet was a product anyone could see.
My job was to turn that conviction into something concrete: a tangible product experience and a narrative sharp enough to show what "Airbnb for transformational experiences" actually looked like.
Making the abstract believable — without faking certainty.
Early-stage vision work is deceptively hard. The idea — a concierge for personal development that pairs people with world-class local experiences (outdoor adventures, wellness retreats, thought-leadership workshops, volunteer missions) matched to their goals, schedule, and budget — was compelling in one sentence and vague everywhere else.
You can't fund, test, or rally a team around a sentence. The task was to make the abstract believable without over-building — enough form to feel real, not so much that we faked a certainty we didn't have.
From a loose set of beliefs to a defined product.
I worked directly from the founder's vision, pulling a loose set of beliefs into a defined product: who the guest is, what they're actually buying, and how the thing would work end to end.
The reference point did a lot of the heavy lifting — anchoring an unfamiliar category to a model people already understood, then designing the experience and the story around it.
The decision that made the vision legible.
The work came down to one reframing that turned an abstract idea into something a team and an investor could grasp.
Frame the product around the person, not the catalog
Goals, schedule, budget, destination. Organizing around the guest's transformation instead of a list of experiences kept the product honest to its "personal development" thesis — and more defensible than another booking site.
A vision made tangible.
The deliverable was a vision made tangible — a coherent product experience and a narrative concrete enough to align a team and present to investors and early partners.
“You can't fund, test, or rally a team around a sentence. The job was to give the vision just enough form to feel real.”