Maps · Validation
The showroom in the river
A dealership pinned its showroom in the middle of the river. The location picker now rejects a pin on water, off a road, or outside Cambodia.
Product lead · Founder, Carmate Cambodia · Phnom Penh, UTC+7
I build products for markets where the playbook doesn't apply.
For six years I've designed, built and run Carmate, Cambodia's one-stop marketplace for new and used cars, from zero: four products, a two-sided business, and the entire codebase. Before that: architecture at the Bartlett and Grimshaw in London, and a vanilla import business I built from scratch.
6 yrs
Founder and product lead
4
Products designed from zero
100+
Dealers, plus every official brand
$36K
Yearly cost cut by taking over development
~1.5/day
Organic buyer leads, $0 ad spend
01 / Case studies
Decisions, and what they changed
Five situations from six years at Carmate: what I saw, what I decided, and what happened.
01Brands didn't want traffic. They wanted customers.How a new-car catalogue became a lead-generation business.Business model · Customer insightRead 02The launch date was fixed. Half the platform wasn't connected.Stepping in, and rebuilding promotions around how Cambodia actually sells cars.Execution · Product judgementRead 03Our first dealership couldn't add a photo.So I built a way to see exactly what each seller sees.User understandingRead 04We launched as an app. Almost nobody installed it.Choosing one channel with a team of two.Strategy · What not to buildRead
051,049 people pressed “Check Offers”. 41 finished.Finding where the rest go, one fix at a time.Analytics · ExperimentsIn progress
02 / Field notes
Small problems, fixed properly
Short ones. Each started with something a user did that I didn't expect.
Forms · Friction
The telecom dropdown
Every phone form asked people to pick their network. I mapped each telecom's number prefixes, and the product now works it out from the number.
Seller Central · Control
Control over automation
When a model goes on promotion, cars already in stock don't change on their own. Staff choose which ones join, so brands aren't afraid to run offers.
03 / The products
Four products, one system
Designed and built end to end, for a market where most users are new to buying online.
Marketplace
B2C · WebNew and used cars, every official brand down to trim level.
Seller Central
B2B · WebOfficial brands manage listings, stock, promotions and staff.
Admin
InternalCatalogue, leads, listing review and real-visitor traffic.
Mobile app
2020 · AppWhere Carmate started. Why it stopped is case study 04.
04 / Other work
Built for others, and built before
A bank platform, an operation run for the same bank, and the first business I took from zero.
Dec 2020 – Dec 2022Fintech · Client
PropertyMap
KB Daehan Specialized Bank
The internal platform bank staff used to record loan collateral: map integration, valuation reports, and area prices with their history. I designed the UI/UX, built the React frontend, and trained the staff.
Oct 2022 – Apr 2024Operations
Repossessed-car store
KB Daehan Specialized Bank
The bank appointed Carmate as its partner to run its repossessed-car store: marketing, a buyer base of dealers and individuals, stock, sales and repairs.
Oct 2015 – Dec 20180 → 1 · B2B
Vanilla import
Park & Company, Korea
Suppliers in Madagascar, then the harder part: finding who in Korea buys vanilla and how much, pricing from landed cost, and building the B2B customer base, brand, packaging and ordering website.
05 / About
From architecture to product.
I trained in architecture at the Bartlett (UCL) and worked at Grimshaw on the London Bridge Station redevelopment, coordinating large systems between many parties. Since then I've built things from nothing three times: a vanilla import business, a collateral platform for a bank, and Carmate.
At Carmate I've owned everything a product lead touches: research with dealers and brands, the business model, UX and the design system, frontend and backend code, deployment and growth, as a team of two. Today I ship the codebase myself with AI-assisted development.
Next: a remote product lead role where product and growth pull in the same direction, in marketplaces, fintech or consumer platforms. I work from Phnom Penh, UTC+7.
ProductStrategy, discovery, business models, roadmaps
DesignUX, UI, design systems, brand identity
BuildReact/Next.js, Node, MongoDB, CI/CD, analytics