Ron Goldin
Design leader who has led design at Google, Shopify and Uber Eats, and co-founded the brand-partnerships product MTCHMKR.
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What they believe
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Prototypes win arguments: moving from slide decks and PRDs to something people can feel and react to gets them psyched.
prototypes win arguments, right? Prototypes get people psyched. like you know moving away from slide decks, moving away from PRDs, moving into like something that people can actually feel and react to
youtube.comSaid 9 Jun 2026This on korrents
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 19 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
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Recent
Prototypes win arguments: moving from slide decks and PRDs to something people can feel and react to gets them psyched.
prototypes win arguments, right? Prototypes get people psyched. like you know moving away from slide decks, moving away from PRDs, moving into like something that people can actually feel and react to
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Managers who are curious and crafty can do a lot more with their 40 hours, because prototyping is now about a hundredth of the effort it used to be.
you can do that in like 100th of the speed. And so I think for managers who are curious and crafty, they can do a lot more with their day with the 40 hours that they have
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
A player coach manages a smaller team while building together with it, rather than sitting in an ivory tower doing performance reviews and alignment meetings.
You're managing the team, but you're also with the team. Like you're building things together. you know, you're kind of not in this ivory tower just doing performance reviews and alignment meetings while the IC's are doing the things the IC's do
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
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Some of the best design leaders are people who have spent some time being entrepreneurs or working in early stage companies, because of the ownership.
some of the best design leaders are people that have spent some amount of time being entrepreneurs or working in early stage companies again because of that ownership thing
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
More companies look at things built outside of work not as extra credit but as possible reasons to hire, in addition to or even over traditional work experience.
I'm definitely seeing more companies that are looking at things that you built outside of work, not as extra credit, but as possibly reasons to get jobs in addition to or even over traditional work experience
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Building software is not as hard as it used to be, but growing an audience is as hard as it always has been.
building software isn't as hard as it used to be, but growing an audience is as hard as it always has been
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
The usual planning exercises still help when building with AI: defining the product's goal, who it is for and its critical user journeys.
all the usual exercises still help of like really clearly defining like what is the goal of this product? Who is it for? What are the critical user journeys that this product is supposed to handle
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Trying to build everything at once with any platform is generally kind of a disaster.
I've generally found that when you try to build everything at once with any platform it's kind of a disaster in a way
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
A place for stored project context that an AI platform can keep referencing is worth setting up.
make sure there's a place that's sort of like the project memory, right? Like kind of your stored context for like what this thing is that it can keep referencing to understand like, oh wait, I'm building a matchmaking service for brands, not whatever some email platform, right
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Sketching a fix in a design tool is probably quicker, and closer to the intended result, than going back and forth in words with an AI.
when something is off in Claude, I could back and forth with it in words for like 10 minutes or I could go to Figma and sketch it out in 5 minutes and it's probably going to be closer to like the pixel perfect version I have in my head
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Branding and differentiation should not wait until the end; once you know what a product is for, define them as early as possible to infuse brand and point of view.
don't wait till like the very end to think about branding and differentiation. Like really try to like I mean in general like I think once you know what the product is and what it's for. I feel like that is a conversation and some definition you should have as early as possible to start to infuse some of that soul and some of that like kind of like brand and point of view into the product
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
AI-built products look very similar because the tools are all trained on the same material.
They're looking at the outputs of AI tools and they're like, "Oh, that's pretty good." But like a lot of them, as we both know, look very similar. And that is because they're literally all being trained on the same world of stuff
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Designers can no longer be just execution or order takers, because a product manager does not need them for that.
you can't just be execution. You can't just be order takers. Not that I think designers ever should be, but like that is no longer valuable because a product manager can doesn't need you anymore to do that
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Designers with the courage to do scrappy research, and who know when it is useful, are very valuable.
designers that like have the the boldness and the courage to like find ways to like do scrappy cafe testing or like user testing.com or whatever it is and know what that looks like, know when it's useful, and like just do it. Like I think that's that's huge
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Finding customers and having a differentiating product that feels premium and connects emotionally with its users fall squarely in the design world.
finding the customers number one like like real growth stuff and then two like having a really differentiating product right that feels more premium has an emotional connection with its users like those are things that fall squarely in the design world
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Reading and understanding the output of an AI coding tool makes a designer a more successful builder.
reading the output of cloud code and what it's doing and understanding it actually makes you a more successful builder
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
A lot of brand expression today can come through motion design, which is an underutilized skill among product designers.
I really think a lot of brand expression today can come with motion design that is and I think it's a very underutilized skill by product designers
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
Managers having the courage to push on AI tools and dogfood them, instead of sending them to the team and hoping they work, matters.
that courage of like being able to sort of push on these tools A and B dog fooding tools instead of just like sending them over to your team and hoping that they work
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
It is a leader's responsibility to understand people's strengths and passions and to grow them into well-rounded team members.
it is your responsibility as a leader at a company to understand what people's strengths are, what their passions are, and to like know how to grow people in the areas to make them well-rounded
Ron Goldin - Building your ideas as a design leader Said 9 Jun 2026
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Where they publish
Newsletter Formative: Product, Design & AI His Substack on product, design and AI.
Essays on AI-assisted building and design careers, such as portfolios, AI tokens and what nine designers say about AI-assisted coding; also announced Formative Labs in April 2026.
Link verified 4 Oct 2026.
x.com @rongoldin His X account.
Account titled “Ron Goldin (@rongoldin)”; not read in detail, only its profile page was checked.
Link verified 4 Oct 2026.
Interviews As a guest Long-form interviews on other people's channels, chosen and not exhaustive.
Dive Club's hour on Uber Eats research tactics, the Shopify checkout redesign, building MTCHMKR in Lovable and how AI changes a design org.
Link verified 4 Oct 2026.
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