Dev Diary: Building a Canny clone in production with Claude
After our free plan in Canny was retired, we had to reassess the value of paying for yet another SaaS, or building it ourselves.
Hi I'm Gabe 👋
I'm an experienced product leader and designer with over a decade in digital product development across design, engineering, and strategy. I'm currently the Head of Product at Unscripted, where I lead a small but mighty team of designers, engineers and PMs driving product-led growth for a global creative platform.
My background spans UI/UX design, web development, branding and product management. I'm proud to bring a rare blend of technical fluency and design thinking to my work and leadership style. My work reflects a deep commitment to building intuitive, human-centred products and fostering collaboration between design, engineering, and business to create meaningful, scalable user experiences.

Designing a mobile-first galleries experience that became the platform's most-used feature within weeks of launch.

Leading a platform-wide architecture migration while keeping the product running for thousands of photographers.

Brand identity, logo, and web design for a Byron Bay tennis label blending classic court aesthetics with modern streetwear sensibility.

Brand identity and logo for a design thinking community that grew from Byron Bay into a national network of city chapters.
I lead Product at Unscripted Photographers, managing a team across engineering, design, and product while overseeing the direction and delivery of our iOS, Android, and web platform.
I own both product strategy and engineering priorities — from discovery and roadmapping through to release management — with a focus on team development, solving real user problems, and using data to guide what we build next.
Drove product-led growth strategy for a scaling startup serving professional photographers, managing a multi-disciplinary team of designers, engineers, and product marketers while leading product discovery, prototyping, user testing, and continuous improvement cycles.
At New Beach, I worked across design and frontend development, creating user interfaces and reusable web components, building responsive frontends in Ruby on Rails, Django, and React, and contributing to backend and database decisions alongside our remote engineering team.
At Navarra, I worked as a UI Designer on a part-time basis, focusing on website and app design for key clients at a full-scope branding agency specialising in visual communication.
At Gothenburg Film Studios, I progressed from graphic design intern to Graphic Designer and Web Developer, working on the visual development of GoKinema and delivering multiple websites and production graphics for both small and large-scale film projects.

After our free plan in Canny was retired, we had to reassess the value of paying for yet another SaaS, or building it ourselves.

Navigating some of the big changes we’re seeing as designers working in product.
