Building 0→1 Products at Moniify
Role: Product Lead
Focus: Product Strategy · Media Innovation · 0→1 Product Building
As one of four Product Leads at Moniify, a stealth-stage business media startup building "Bloomberg for the next generation", I developed three video-first products from zero, launched two, and built a 20+ hybrid product–editorial team.
My Product Portfolio
Each of the three products I led at Moniify addressed a distinct problem or opportunity for our target audience: English-speaking Zillennial professionals, investors, and entrepreneurs, particularly in Asia's fast-growing markets.
Moniify Creators
LaunchedA creator-led product built around the insight that, while creators had become a leading voice for Zillennials, finance media had failed to integrate them into their editorial output.
Learn more about this productMoniify Daily
LaunchedA daily video product based on the insight that "new money" topics such as AI, crypto, and emerging markets were under-served by traditional coverage.
Learn more about this productRicHer
PilotedA female-led finance and investing format driven by the insight that, despite women representing a rapidly growing investor segment, financial media still lacked female perspectives on practical finance and investing.
Learn more about this productThe Product Philosophy
Unlike traditional media organizations, Moniify adopted a product-first model replacing siloed editorial desks with cross-functional teams that lived by the following principles:
- Build user-centric products our audience loves
- A product with no brand will fail
- Use insights and data to guide every decision
- Create a passionate community that champions our brand
- Stay agile, adapt quickly, and experiment continuously
Each initiative functioned as its own product with a distinct audience strategy, brand identity, and growth metrics. Product Leads acted as "Collaborators in Chief", balancing editorial ambition, business priorities, and technical constraints.
In practice, this philosophy came to life through early-stage product strategy formulation grounded in market, competitive, and user research, followed by format prototyping and initial post-launch testing and iteration.
Building 0→1
Company Vision
Moniify's founding belief was:
Helping young people build personal wealth is a way of helping them achieve personal freedom.
Topically, we focused on markets & macro, tech & AI, crypto & DeFi, and private equity. Our main target audience were English-speaking Zillennials in the following high-growth markets:
- UAE
- KSA
- Indonesia
- India
- Singapore
These young professionals were underrepresented but fast-growing demographic eager for credible, digital-first coverage of the industries shaping their financial futures. Additionally, we developed specific audience personas in collaboration with Fluency, an external research agency.
Translating the Company Vision into Products
Reporting to the CPO, I translated the company vision into three tangible 0→1 products, delivering strategy, execution, and cross-functional alignment:
- Developed product strategies grounded in user, market, and competitive research
- Built and led three hybrid product–editorial teams (20+ team members)
- Coordinated with finance and legal on budgets, contracts, and compliance
- Created Airtable-based workflow systems for cross-team and external collaboration
- Worked on brand systems with design
- Partnered with engineering, design, and analytics on user journeys, data layers, and website discovery optimization and feature prioritization
- Drove format prototyping pre-launch and A/B testing post launch
- Designed launch frameworks together with marketing and PR
Constraints
Early-Stage Build
As a newly formed startup, Moniify operated without established systems or processes. I was building foundational infrastructure and hiring team members in parallel with product development. As a result, timelines were compressed and operational complexity was high.
Engineering Capacity
The engineering team was understaffed, with vendor turnover delaying key website features including search, shareability, chapters, and listen-to-video. A mobile app was postponed to a later phase.
Marketing & Distribution Freeze
Paid media and advertising were frozen days after the company's public launch, severely limiting discoverability and audience growth for a completely new brand and newly released products.
Strategic Pivot
Within weeks of launch, Moniify underwent a leadership transition, a shift in strategy and scale, and multiple rounds of layoffs that reduced the workforce by roughly 75%. Most product initiatives, including all of my products, were suspended during this pivot.
Because the suspension occurred so early in the product cycle, testing and optimization remained in early stages, and limited data was collected to inform iteration.
Outcome
In six months, I:
- Built three insight-led media products and launched two of them
- Hired and led a 20+ person cross-functional product–editorial team
- Created workflow systems that became the operational backbone for multiple products
- Generated early evidence supporting creator-led, regionally relevant, and women-led finance media products
None of the products had the chance to fully mature: all were discontinued within weeks of Moniify's public launch amid a company-wide pivot, leadership change, and layoffs.
Even so, the 0→1 phase signaled what a next-generation business media company could achieve by uniting product thinking with editorial rigor.