Kia Ora, nice to meet you

Hi, I am Karl Friend, I have been fortunate to be able to make a career out of things I love doing.
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Sixteen years ago I founded a software startup called Friendly Manager, grew it to over $1.5 million in recurring revenue, 700 clients, 1 million active users and 17 FTE staff.

We owe our success and thrived as a company because of good software design, listening to customers and great teamwork.
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Over the last few years I have transitioned from a company CEO to full-time Senior Product Design Lead with over 15 years experience designing and building applications.

I stepped back from running my company due to my newborn daughter needing open heart surgery at 6 days old.Her recovery process was long and slow and required my wife and I to be in hospital with her for the first 5 months of her life, and I am now a trusted advisor for the company.

I excel at activating and pioneering projects and seeing new possibilities come to life, I love connecting and relating to clients, understanding their requirements and designing great products around and with them.

My favorite thing is when a client tells me "“I’m not sure how you did it but this is exactly what I needed!”
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I am a person who can adapt to different situations and changes in scope easily, I can lead a team to deliver projects on time and I am hugely passionate about using Figma and other tools to create everything from wireframes to interactive prototypes.
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My ability to connect with customers, understand pain points and most importantly the commercial outcome, train a team and design awesome solutions makes me an invaluable asset to any team.
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Let’s chat about how we can work together on your next project.

Lets chat about your project

15+ Years SaaS Experience

July 2009

Starting out

In 2009 I was in my last year of my Bachelor’s in Information Technology at what was then Bay of Polytechnic. Half-way through the last semester, I found myself being approached by friends and family to build websites for them. I wanted to start charging for the builds I was doing, so I asked my tutor ‘How do I start a company?’ He looked me in the eye and said I would never run a company.

The next day I left polytechnic and started my company.

August 2009

CMS Built Websites

I started off by building websites from 2009 and to 2015 using CMS platforms like Wordpress, Joomla, etc.

January 2015

Friendly Shops (e-Commerce)

In 2010 I hired my first employee who is still with the company today. After some time getting my feet wet in business and understanding things, we decided that we would build “build it yourself” e-commerce platform. Two weeks after launching the platform Shopify decided to launch in the Southern Hemisphere which wiped out our market – I learnt a lot of lessons from the school of hard knocks.

December 2016

Friendly Mananger (CEO)

In 2016 I was volunteering with my local church group. On the second night of volunteering, I was handed a box of paper work and told “Hey, deal with this.” After doing some online investigation into platforms and not finding anything suitable to deal with the administration load, I decided to build my own platform in my spare time using PHP and MySql.

January 2018

Friendly Mananger (CEO)

Once I had finished the first version I was showing a friend of mine and she said  ”This is awesome, but my group is cheerleaders and not members” - so I added a different setting, showed her the next day and she said “Wow, how much is it?” It was at that point I realised what I had created. Since then I have taken the company to 16 staff, and have built the company to nearly 1m in ARR.

We work with over 500+ clubs and organisations. We have just hired a CEO to take it to the next level and now I feel it is time for me to step into my next adventure.

March 2020

Friendly Manager (Product Designer)

I led a team of 8 and would provide an end-to-end product design solution. I would gather requirements from clients; create wireframes; create low fidelity designs and design interactive prototypes. I would oversee production specs, facilitate design reviews with the leadership team and collaborate closely with developers, researchers, the sales team and customer success team.

April 2022

UX/UI Senior Product Designer - Contractor

In April 2022 I started contracting to other clients as well as being on the board of Friendly Mananger. I am now working with clients from all walks of life mainly in the SaaS industry and passing on my knowledge and skills to help the next generation of SaaS. I would love to have a chat about your project and see how I can help.

Kia Ora, nice to meet you

Experience

Certificates

My Journey