Lumiant Pty Ltd

Head of Design

Senior UX Designer

Testimonial Donut

Building software to simplify your testimonial collection process. Build trust and sell more.

Co-Founder

Founderoo

A website telling the stories of founders, minus the PR bullshit fluff.

Kaddim

Invoice2go

Loved my time at Invoice2go, met some great mates and built some cool stuff.

Senior Product Designer

Qantas

Was stoked to join Qantas.  Psychological safety was scarce during these 12 months. I quit before finishing my contract.

Tabcorp

This was my first break into UX as a 40-year-old career changer. Will forever be thankful to Mick and Mehran for giving me a punt. Loved lots of people from these days. Couldn't have asked for a better apprenticeship.

UX Designer

blueegg

Having completed the General Assembly UX immersive, Adam kindly helped me with a short UX contract. Always thankful for this. My anxiety was pretty next level for these 3 months. Imposter syndrome in full flight.

Kwik Kopy Australia Pty Ltd

Was given an amazing break to get sponsored by Kwik Kopy. This meant me and my family could stay in Australia. Forever grateful to Andrew, Richard & Sue for all this.

General Manager

Bluestone Cleaning

Started Bluestone with Sandrita (my wife). We did all the cleaning. Grew it to 50 full-time employees with a max turnover of 750k turnover (GB pounds). 

I was obsessed and loved it. Then I screwed it up. Took 120K out of my home equity and put it into the business. Finally had to liquidate and lost 120K pounds. Big ouch.

Cried a bit, lost a lot of hair and emigrated to Australia with my wife and 2 kids within a few months of shutting up shop.

Founder /  Manager

Co-founder Testimonial Donut, Founderoo + Kaddim. Design at Lumiant.

I'm a Sydney based Product/UX Designer working hard to make products suck a little less. 

On the side, I run a few small bets with Farzan Maghami:

Testimonial Donut - a SaaS product that makes it easy to collect and add video testimonials to your website (in Beta right now).

Founderoo -  a website telling the stories of business founders. 

Kaddim -  a tech company that has built software to securely collect a client's documents and information.

This is me in 2009 after I lost $250K Australian dollars. I was anxious and stressed.

I was screwed. 

After running my cleaning business for eight years in Edinburgh, Scotland, I was struggling. 

I had 50 full-time employees; breaking even every month was around £60,000. 

It was a lot. 

It was too much. 

I wasn't sleeping well and was taking sleeping tablets. 

I was cranky and short with Sandrita and the kids. My daughters were around 2 and 3 years old at the time.

It was the GFC (global financial crisis) in 2009, so the crunch was happening. I took around £120,000 out of my house and put it into the business to prop it up. 

This was a big f**ck up.

Long story short, many of the businesses we worked for went out of business. 

We were owed a lot of money and couldn't stay afloat. 

I was pretty f**cked. £120,000, which is around $250,000 Australian dollars, was on the line. 

I was grey around the gills, burned out and highly stressed.

One morning, I woke up, and without even telling Sandrita (my nearest and dearest), I called in the liquidators. 

I was freaking out.

As I sat outside the liquidators in my car in Edinburgh, I called my Mum. I don't know why I called Mum, but it seemed the right thing to do. She knows me better than anyone else. 

My Mum's not emotional, which probably rubbed off on me. 

We both shed a tear that day on the call. It was weird. 

We don't do that. It felt very final and very intense. 

I felt buggered. As soon as I pulled the trigger, I lost $250K in Australian dollars. 

It still hurts today. I could do with that cash right now.
 
I had to talk to the team in the Bluestone (our business) office. 

We had around 50 full-time staff members at that time. Many of my team had worked their arses off for me over the years. As I told them our time was over, my voice was muffled. I was gutted. 

I was heartbroken.

Within three months of the closure, Sandrita and I were on flights to Australia. It was 2010. 

We didn't even say goodbye to lots of our Edinburgh friends. I remember taxiing to the airports with Inty and Luna (our kids), feeling like we were escaping our problems. Their lives would be forever different.

My Mum told me whatever troubles you have, they'll follow you, and she added Sandrita (my wife) is a survivor, so we'll be okay.  

It's taken me a long time to get over the trauma of losing more money than I can afford. Risk makes me nervous these days. 

Sounds weird but writing this brought a tear to my year.

Being a founder is full-bodied. I don't regret a moment of it. 

If you want to do it, just do it. It might not work out, and it might mess you up. 

For me, it went to shit in a big way. But with no shit, you learn nothing. 

Thanks for reading to the bottom. 🙏  I'm off to bed.

Guy Ligertwood 🍩

Co-founder Testimonial Donut, Founderoo, Kaddim. Design at Lumiant.

What are the key lessons from a financial crisis?

What impact does entrepreneurship have on individuals?

This is me at the desk in my bedroom in Edinburgh, Scotland, 2002.  I'd just started my cleaning company with my now-wife Sandrita, having moved back from Australia.

I used to keep a note of all the cleaning jobs on that little notepad in front of me. If I lost it, I was screwed.  

How good is the brick laptop next to me?

Having a piece of a business in whatever shape or form is super important for me. It gets me out of bed in the morning. It gives me purpose. 

Having a share in a successful business will one day give me the freedom to choose when I sit at my desk. 

Having a share in a successful business will allow me to spend more quality time with my family. 

Having a share in a successful business will mean my kids get to learn that straight-up employment can be limiting. Not bad, but limiting.

Whether it's a share of the business you work at or a business of your own (side gig or more), I truly believe you should always keep an iron in that fire. 

I've tried many weird and wonderful projects/businesses over the years and learnt a tonne. 

I've f*cked things up many times.

I've lost 6 figure money from my mistakes. 

I've given people jobs. I've taken people's jobs away. 

I've lost mates but made more.

I have no real regrets, just a long list of learnings. 

I'll always have my own business.

I'll never stop working, and I'll never stop sitting at my desk.

I want to make my wife and kids proud. That's it. Nothing more.

Enough bloody rambling. I need to go to bed. Night.

#founders
#entrepreneurs

Sometimes it feels like you're walking in quicksand running a startup, and the only way to get through is to keep moving forward.

We've been doing that at Testimonial Donut and we're starting to get momentum. 

It feels bloody good. 

The work outweighs the wins right now but we hope that'll change in the next few months as we carry on building out the platform. 

Lots of learnings and changes on the fly to make it all work. 

LFG 💪 🩷

Farzan Maghami 🍩
Nishant Desai

#testimonials


What impact can startups have on the industry?

What is the importance of platform development in a startup?

In the evenings, Farzan has been sending out links to our Testimonial Donut customers. 

Each of these single links lets our customers send it to their customers, allowing those end customers to give testimonials or Google reviews to them. 

Once we've done this, we'll create a custom on-brand widget for them that they can put on their website. 

This testimonial or Google review can be completed on a desktop computer or mobile. 

We had some bugs on a couple of Samsung phones (Android), which meant that when people tried to record a video testimonial, the phone camera wasn't being accessed.

Having tested the hell out of it on BrowserStack (which allows you to emulate a huge range of mobiles and browsers) the team has worked out the issue.

I'd love people's experiences testing their applications on Browser Stack with different browsers and mobiles. I'm interested in having a trial of it for a few months to test away and iron out any bugs. 

Thanks, Farzan and Nishant, for solving this mystery. 

Also, massive thanks to Aidan for letting us know early so we could sort it. I'm sorry you had to be the guinea pig for this outlier issue.

These bugs don't get fixed quickly without feedback from people. 

Now we'll update the Android flow to be slightly different from that of the Apple one.

Startup life is always learning and fixing stuff. 

You can design what you want, but until it's in the hands of your real customers, you don't really know what is actually going on under the hood.

#testimonials


What impact does testing applications have on product development?

What challenges are common in startup life?

The Testimonial Donut landing page is bloody done. I'd run out of excuses. telling Farzan lots of tall tales about why it wasn't quite there yet. 

Take a look and tell me what's crap and what's cracking. All feedback is welcome.

Thanks Max Kitchen; your heading copy is up in lights, and I bloody love it. At some point, we need to find a Gran to try it out.

#testimonials
#Ilovedonuts

Open video: Arc - Testimonial Donut - 14 April 2024 on loom.com

Guy Ligertwood

Farzan M.

This man's a natural in front of the camera. Well bloody done Farzan, lovely testimonial for Brian Petro.

LFG  💪 🩷

Testimonial Donut

I interview/study successful founders + share their stories. Product at Ignition. Founder at Founderoo, Testimonial Donut + Kaddim

Imagine being able to talk to your personal notes using ChatGPT! Well that's what I've been doing for months thank to Brian Petro! 

If you're interested, then you should watch this video review that I recorded for Brian about his niche AI product (Smart Connections), that allows my note taking app (Obsidian) to interface with ChatGPT. 

Brian was looking for ways to showcase how his customers use his tool, so he decided to use Testimonial Donut 🍩, the product that Guy and I have been building :)

P.S. If you have questions about Smart Connections, feel free to comment and I'll do my best to answer.

We've added some new stuff to Testimonial Donut.

Now, you can send one link to your customers to get video or text testimonials or even Google reviews. 💪

This is my best blue steel look. 😉

Screenshot your best blue steel look, in the messages below. 

Test it out for yourself here!
https://lnkd.in/gE3EKX3g

Farzan Maghami 🍩
Nishant Desai

We've added some new stuff to Testimonial Donut.

Now, you can send one link to your customers to get video or text testimonials or even Google reviews. 💪

This is my best blue steel look. 😉

Screenshot your best blue steel look, in the messages below. 

Test it out for yourself here!
https://lnkd.in/gE3EKX3g

Farzan M.
Nishant Desai

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