Builder · EU time zone
DanielMagowan
Product, with a foot in design and engineering. Into trading, crypto, AI, and longevity.
About
I like building things that last.
I grew up in South Africa, studied politics, psychology and philosophy, then law, and practised as an M&A attorney. I left corporate life to co-found a cycling-analytics app called Hubtiger. After exiting, I rekindled an old passion for crypto, traded solo for a while, then missed building and joined Nansen, where I've held several product roles, mainly the core analytics product and more recently leading the trading product.
Away from the screen I'm a father first, happiest in cold water, on long mountain walks with my golden retriever, or down a rabbit hole on longevity. I still enjoy a good glass of red wine or a single malt whisky.
Selected work
Nansen Trading
Product lead · now
Leading the product turning Nansen from an analytics platform into somewhere people actually trade.
Nansen Analytics
Product lead
Led the core analytics product traders and funds rely on to read the market onchain.
Cycling analytics
Co-founder
Left law to co-found Hubtiger, a cycling-analytics startup.
How I think about product
Product method acting.
I borrow from method acting. I don't study the user from a safe distance, I become one, all the way in, until their problems are my problems. It is the most reliable way I know to build something people actually trust.
Hubtiger · cycling
Co-founding Hubtiger after leaving law, I didn't just interview riders. I trained until I could line up for multiple three and four-day stage races myself. You build differently once your own legs have paid for the insight.
Nansen · crypto
I was already active in crypto, but I moved my entire network and daily life into it, and have stayed there for five years. You can't build credible tools for a world you only visit.
What that turns into
Iterate fast.
Speed of learning beats being right on the first try. Ship something real, watch what happens, adjust, and go again.
Design is the product.
Not a coat of paint applied at the end. How it looks and how it feels are what people actually experience, so UX and UI get my attention from day one.
Dogfood relentlessly.
If I'm not using it every day, I have no business deciding what it should become. Daily use surfaces the truth a review never will.
Make it simpler.
Every feature is a cost. The hardest and most valuable work is usually taking things away until only the essential is left.
Prototype to think.
AI has made prototyping nearly free. A thing you can click settles an idea faster than any document or deck ever will.
Sometimes the PM should ship.
At the right moment, going into the codebase and shipping to production is the highest-leverage thing I can do. I don't outsource that on principle.
What pulls me in
Markets
The largest and most honest information system humans have ever built.
I trade them and read them. The signal is in the flows, the positioning, and who's about to be forced to act.
Crypto
The most consequential monetary experiment of our lifetime, mostly mistaken for a casino.
I care about the primitives, not the noise. Settlement, self-custody, and trust you don't have to ask permission for.
AI
The model isn't the product. The interface to its judgment is.
The teams that win won't have the best model. They'll have the best taste in where to point it.
Longevity
Optimising the one asset that compounds longest: my own health.
Supplementation, training, and the marginal gains, sleep, sauna, red light therapy, that keep the engine running for the long game.
Outside the screen
Family
First, always.
Cold water
Very cold swims, the colder the better.
Mountains
Long walks up high with my golden retriever.
Wine & whisky
A good red or a single malt to end the day.
On the shelf
Some books I've found worth the time. Always mid-way through the next one.
- Sci-fi
Red Rising
Pierce Brown
- Sci-fi
Silo
Hugh Howey
- Sci-fi
Children of Time
Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Thriller
I Am Pilgrim
Terry Hayes
- Money
Broken Money
Lyn Alden
- Longevity
Why We Sleep
Matthew Walker
- Leadership
Extreme Ownership
Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
- Product
Inspired & Empowered
Marty Cagan
- Product
The Lean Startup
Eric Ries
- Memoir
Shoe Dog
Phil Knight
- Biography
Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson
- True story
The Boys in the Boat
Daniel James Brown
- Classic
1984
George Orwell
Say hello
Always up for a good conversation about what comes next.
On EU time. Replies faster to a specific question than a vague one.