About / Neville Ko
My journey as a practitioner of product management, design, business, and AI.
Hi, I'm Nev. This isn't a standard (design) portfolio because I've worn many hats through my career from building startups, adding value to PE-backed companies, to running agile processes, (etc.) - none of which are core to design.
The goal is to explain the roles I've played so you can understand where and how I can bring value.
Why? Because careers evolve and job/client interviews are restrictive. I hope this window will let you know me better.
Distinct AI, Corel,
Alludo, business ventures
01/ Product
My Role in Building Products (ie. Product Management, Product Owner)
I’m neither an MBA nor a traditionally trained product manager. My “product management” background comes from my business and operational acumen by operating through peaks and troughs of markets, startups, business ventures, and years of experimentation.
I spent ~15 years at Corel/Alludo wearing multiple hats simultaneously as a product owner, co-SCRUM master, UX/UI designer, and design manager. We were small teams with low budgets. We simply took agency and did what had to be done to “ship.”
As Head of Product & Experience at Distinct AI, I work with leadership to understand how our company brings value. It's abstract and messy. My job as a strategic “glue” is to make sense of these abstractions, visualize them into notes, spreadsheets, mockups, or by whatever means necessary so that they become actionable. I use a simple, tested ‘VSR’ framework: Vision, Strategy, Roadmap (learn more).
Logos
Distinct AI, CorelDRAW, Alludo, WinZip, PaintShop Pro, AfterShot, etc.
02 / Design
My role in Designing Products (ie. UX & UI)
I’ve designed user and customer experiences for ~20 years. My career spans from mature, private equity-owned (KKR, Vector Capital), multi-million dollar product portfolios such as CorelDRAW, WinZip, PaintShop Pro, and AfterShot to ambitious startups like Distinct AI, Apois, etc. Every product and team were/are different; there’s no single playbook to “design”.
The value I bring is an arsenal of techniques and skills that I can adapt and use based on circumstances, budget, and goals (eg, user journey maps, heuristic evaluations, design systems, prototypes, “eye-candy” conceptualizations, etc.).
I’m a trained Industrial Designer (BID, MDes) from an engineering faculty. My approach is rooted in practicality and operational efficiency, focusing on how to actually bring ideas and abstractions into a marketable product or service.
Logos
Distinct AI, Apois, Jream Studio, Substance Magazine, CIMA
03 / Business & Ops
My role in Building Businesses & Operations
My venture into business building started as a first/second-year university student. We were brought together by a savvy and visionary student who wanted to establish Ottawa as the fashion capital of Canada, forming the Canadian Internal Modelling Agency (CIMA). We organized and ran fashion shows, brought in sponsors, wrote business plans, then expanded into digitalizing fashion editorials by building another company called Substance Magazine.
Fast forward 20+ years, I’ve since operated in varying startups and businesses ranging from Apois (e-commerce clothing rental and subscription company), Jream Studio (web design consulting), Shop the Fashion Corner (direct-to-consumer retail of pre-loved clothing) to Distinct AI (multi-media generation software specializing in AI).
Through necessity, I’ve learned how to write business plans, understand financial reports, analyze market trends, build investment decks for prospective venture capital investors, bring value to private equity firms. These learnings have profound impact on my approach to business, design, and operations.
Logo
Distinct AI, Self
04 / Human & AI Co-Creation
My role in Building & Experimenting with AI
I’m a techno-pragmatist. I believe humans have an important role to play in the age of AI*.
My belief is rooted in my experience experimenting with various AI models and platforms; building agents, subagents, and skills; comparing token efficiency across local and cloud models; and learning how to optimize context windows, memory management, etc.
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You, as a human, must be involved in the decision-making and taste-building touch-points of human-AI co-creation. And when you are, the quality of the co-created outcome is so significantly better. It becomes an extension of you, your work, your decision-making because it reflects your unique taste (more on this in “Thoughts”).
*Yes, I’m using “AI” as a catch-all for simplicity’s sake.