Fanblock:↳ Multi-TenantWeb3

Joining Fanblock as the initial design resource meant establishing the product from a conceptual pitch deck into a live platform. The mandate was to drive the 0-to-1 lifecycle across three core phases:

Directing the strategic prototype required to secure a crucial $1M+ seed funding injection.

Recruiting and establishing workflows for a distributed design team of over 10 people.

Architecting the multi-tenant system that successfully launched AC Milan and subsequently Tottenham Hotspur on the exact same core product infrastructure.

The timeline demanded a launch with AC Milan in just 120 days once development began. At the project's inception, there was no branding, no UI, and no shared mental model. Three constraints defined the operational reality:

The immediate priority was capital injection, not deep UI validation. To unblock the business, the traditional discovery phase was bypassed. Partnering with my design intern, Jess, we built a high-fidelity strategic prototype in under five days.

A polished North Star prototype was strategically utilised to secure investment faster than standard wireframes.

This approach traded deep persona validation for speed to funding—a UX debt planned for repayment once the development team commenced work.

The prototype successfully secured over $1M in additional seed funding before a single line of code was written. Once secured, this initiated the strict 120-day countdown to the AC Milan launch.

The initial pitch to investors relied on an "Elite Luxury" high-ticket sales model.

User testing clearly indicated the entry point was too high, threatening engagement regardless of the club's brand strength.

Presenting this data prompted a structural pivot toward an "Accessible Gaming" model, introducing multiple tiers and lower entry points to ensure a viable user base.

Following team assembly, the focus shifted to architectural oversight. This included driving the broader product architecture, providing strategic blueprints for the UX Lead, and managing an external research agency to stress-test the AC Milan launch culturally and linguistically.

Within exactly 120 days of the first line of code being written, the AC Milan beta launched on a scalable, tokenised multi-tenant platform.

Following this initial deployment, Tottenham Hotspur was integrated seamlessly on the same system at just 65% of the original build cost.

The seed round secured an additional $1M+, driven entirely by a rapid-turnaround prototype.

The operational firewall—comprising the Definition of Done and child library architecture—enabled a distributed team to execute at high velocity while maintaining structural integrity.

Fanblock demonstrated that early-stage product design requires accurately identifying the immediate business need and adapting structural systems to meet it.

Presenting data that directly conflicts with founder assumptions is challenging but vital for product survival. A key operational takeaway was that structural governance cannot wait. While early sprint pressure made establishing child libraries and strict definitions feel secondary, establishing a shared systems language immediately ultimately saves the capital required to correct architectural drift later.