Since joining The Village Hive Eglinton in June 2022, Vlad has truly become a big part of our community. One of the first members to arrive in the morning and always up for a chat about food, travel or current events. Keep reading to find out more about him.

Tell us about your profession. What type of clients do you serve?

I am the founder of Propel Digital – a strategic design consultancy focusing on product design for fintech, e-commerce, and B2B SaaS. We partner up with early and growth stage tech startups to streamline their product delivery. While actual UI and UX design is a big part of our work, a differentiator that we are able to demonstrate to our clients is around unlocking business value through design thinking. In one case, a customer journey exploration led us to create a simple design improvement to a checkout flow that generated USD $30M in additional revenue in just six months.

What inspires the work you do?

Many people think that design is a creative profession. I think of design as a problem solving discipline. Nothing inspires me more than seeing a thoughtful design have a measurable impact on some hard metric like revenue.

How did you get into this profession?

I started doing web design in the 90’s while teaching myself Photoshop. After several free websites for friends, someone offered me $200 to make a website and that was my “A-ha!” moment – I dropped out of a business school to start my web design practice and the rest is history. 

Do you have a favourite restaurant that you like to go to in midtown Toronto?

You can find me at Kinton Ramen at least once or twice per week.

Do you have a morning routine? 

Coffee, coffee, work.

What do you do when you’re not working?

I’ve been practicing Muay Thai for 10 years so you are likely to find me in a boxing gym or lifting weights.

How do people get in touch with you if they need your services?

Check out https://propel.digital for details!