Founder of Kinplan.
Product design & delivery.
Montréal, Canada.
Kinplan
A company I founded
Bilingual planning for parents and known donors, with independent answers, shared review and an AI guide.
View Kinplan case study
Browse all work
Kinplan starts with each person’s perspective. The product makes room for differences before asking anyone to agree.
I founded it, designed the experience and built a bilingual product with an AI guide that keeps decisions with participants.
View Kinplan case study
Before the
shared plan
Try the reviewHow would you like to stay in contact?
Alex · Intended parent
“I’d like to share an update each year, and stay open to more contact.”
Sam · Known donor
“I’m open to updates. I haven’t decided how involved I want to be.”
Interactive explanation of the product approach. Fictional people and answers; this is not a captured product screen.
The document keeps unresolved questions visible for legal review. Public English preview, fictional data.
Product design & technical program delivery · ValPay · Live deployment
View case study
Actual portal components, rendered locally with fictional data.
In a separate payments and payouts redesign, merchants’ receipts, reports and statements did not line up. Support carried the questions; sales struggled to retain merchants.
I owned requirements, redesigned screens, acceptance criteria and release approval. I recommended postponing a low-incidence dispute capability to prioritise reconciliation and usability. After release, I observed fewer support inquiries and improved merchant NPS.
Qualitative observations. Exact figures are not available.
Read the decision and outcome
A volunteer organisation still needs a website, fundraising tools and a dependable way to work together.
I built the website, moved the team to Google Workspace and implemented Zeffy fundraising and New/Mode advocacy. Occasional support continues.
Different problems. The same responsibility to make the work useful.
Have a product to launch, an experience to improve, or a way of working that needs attention?
I help founders and small teams turn customer problems into priorities, clear requirements and working releases. I stay hands-on with interface design, acceptance criteria and delivery.
Turn an idea into a product people can understand and use. Discovery, user journeys, interface design, prototypes, websites and AI-assisted implementation, with attention to the details that make the experience work.
Untangle onboarding, payments, support and internal workflows. Connect the product, documentation and tools so customers and teams have a clearer path through the work. Introduce automation where it serves a useful purpose.
Bring me into a defined project or an ongoing engagement. I can move between customer insight, product priorities, hands-on design and delivery as the work requires, while keeping responsibilities and scope clear.
My experience spans fintech, SaaS, payments and eCommerce, including roles at ValPay, Lightspeed and Shopify. I’m also the founder of Kinplan, where I bring product direction, design and building together in my own business.
Based in Montréal. Available for remote collaboration and selected on-site work.
Tell me what you’re working on.
I learned to build by listening to the people left dealing with a product’s rough edges.
At Shopify and Lightspeed, I worked directly with merchants. At ValPay, I held the sole product leadership remit from April 2025 to August 2026, owning requirements, interface design, acceptance criteria and release approval.
I shaped strategy and quarterly priorities, balancing sales opportunities with stability, accuracy, resources and risk for CEO and CTO approval. Engineering and QA owned technical corrections and validation.
Founding Kinplan brings that work together: deciding what matters, designing the experience, building it and staying responsible for what happens next.
Today, I bring that hands-on ownership to Kinplan and to teams that need someone to connect customer insight, strategy, design and delivery.
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Kristian
Off the clock, Dymond keeps me on my toes.
From Europe and China to Canada. Explore the places and experiences that shaped how I work.
Select a city to explore roles and dates.
Montréal
- Co-founderUm, hello.Nov 2026 to Present
- FounderKinplanSep 2026 to Present
- Senior Product DesignerValPayJan to Aug 2026
- Technical Program Manager (Product Strategy & Delivery)ValPayApr to Dec 2025
- Sole product leadership remitApr 2025 to Aug 2026
- Customer Success LeadValPayApr 2024 to Mar 2025
- GTM Operations SpecialistLightspeedDec 2023 to Apr 2024
- eCommerce Technician IILightspeedJan 2020 to Jan 2023
- Senior ContributorMavTekJul to Dec 2019
“Kristian combines strong payments knowledge with transparency, tenacity, and attention to detail. He cares about doing things well and approaches product problems thoughtfully, with clear outcomes in mind.”
Nicolas Grevet
Former Head of Engineering, ValPay · Worked with Kristian
LinkedIn · Sep 2026 · Summary · 1 of 11