François Savard
Entrepreneur building for Legal Tech, Payments and Fintech based in Singapore.
I'm a French entrepreneur based in Singapore.
Over almost a decade, I've worked across design, product, and business, helping build and scale companies in legal tech, fintech, and payments.
Today, I focus on one thing: helping good products reach the people they're built for.
My work sits at the intersection of product, positioning, sales, and distribution. Sometimes that means refining a product before it goes to market. Other times it's building a commercial strategy from scratch, recruiting a sales team, or helping founders turn early traction into sustainable growth.
I usually get involved when a product works, but the business around it needs to catch up.
Throughout my career, I've found that the biggest challenges rarely come from technology alone. Products struggle because positioning is unclear, distribution isn't structured, or teams become disconnected from what customers actually need. I enjoy working where those different disciplines meet, making sure product, business, and execution move in the same direction.
My career started in design.
For several years I worked in agencies and product companies, designing digital products, building brands, and working closely with engineering teams. Design taught me how people interact with products, what creates trust, and why details matter. That way of thinking still influences everything I do today, even though my role has evolved far beyond design itself.
In 2020, I co-founded Advokatguiden, a platform built to make the legal industry more transparent by helping people compare lawyers through verified reviews, detailed profiles, and accessible legal information. What started as a Norwegian platform later expanded internationally under The Lawyer Guide, entering markets including the United States, Switzerland, and Denmark.
Founders of Advokatguiden.no and The Lawyer Guide, Erling Løken Andersen and François Savard, in 2022.
During the early years, I worked across almost every part of the business. I helped design the product, define how lawyers and clients interacted on the platform, shape the user experience, build the brand, and establish the commercial foundations that would allow the company to grow. Like many early-stage startups, there wasn't a clear distinction between product, marketing, sales, or strategy. Everything was interconnected.
In 2024, I became CEO. My focus gradually shifted away from designing interfaces and toward building the business around the product. That meant developing our monetization strategy, leading international expansion, building our sales organisation, refining our commercial positioning, and helping the platform adapt to the rise of AI-powered search. We also made one of the company's biggest strategic decisions by increasing the price of our Premium offering nearly fourfold, a move that fundamentally changed the economics of the business.
That experience completely changed the way I think about products. I realised that building something people love is only one part of the equation. Understanding how to distribute it, communicate its value, price it correctly, and build a sustainable business around it is just as important.
After Norway, I moved back to France in 2024 to launch END Agency and work freelance.
END Agency started as a design studio, but quickly evolved into something much closer to a product and growth consultancy for early-stage founders. Rather than being hired to produce interfaces or branding, I became involved in the broader questions every startup faces: What should we build? Who is it for? How do we position it? Why would anyone choose it over the alternatives?
I worked alongside founders during the earliest stages of their companies, helping them shape products, simplify user experiences, define their positioning, and turn ideas into businesses people actually wanted to use. My role often extended far beyond design, covering product strategy, commercial thinking, pricing, and go-to-market decisions long before a company had dedicated teams for those functions.
Scaling END Agency while holding conferences at Epitech Montpellier
END also gave me the opportunity to work across a wide range of industries, from fintech and legal technology to AI and Web3. Every project was different, but the challenge was remarkably consistent: understanding how products create value, how businesses communicate that value, and how good execution compounds over time.
During that time, I also became increasingly involved with World Class Design, speaking at conferences and events about AI, product design, and the emergence of vibe coding alongside Guidione Machava. Those conversations exposed me to founders, designers, engineers, and product leaders from around the world, many of whom were navigating the same questions I was seeing through END.
Switching side on design with World Class Design.
One observation kept coming back. Great designers often struggled to find the right companies, while companies struggled just as much to find designers who truly fit their stage and ambitions. It reinforced an idea that had been following me throughout my career: the hardest problems are rarely about design alone. They're about connecting the right people, products, and commercial strategies to create sustainable growth.
Something clicked about the industry.
I realised there had never been more talented designers available, yet finding the right opportunity had somehow become more difficult. At the same time, founders and companies kept telling the same story: hiring great designers was harder than ever. Positions stayed open for months, hiring decisions were often driven by internal recommendations, and too many companies ended up with people who simply weren't the right fit.
The problem wasn't a lack of talent. It was a lack of connection between the right designers and the right companies.
That observation completely changed how I looked at the design industry and would later become one of the reasons I became involved in building the commercial side of World Class Design.
I help build the commercial side of the platform and its global distribution strategy. The mission is simple: help companies recruit great designers more efficiently while helping talented designers connect with the opportunities that deserve them. After connecting people with the right lawyers through The Lawyer Guide, it's an interesting continuation of my career to now connect companies with the right design talent.
I spoke at Mistral AI Paris about the growing influence of AI in design processes
In early 2026, I relocated to Singapore and joined Sambapay as Chief Commercial Officer.
Sambapay helps small and medium-sized businesses accept card payments through modern payment terminals, competitive pricing, and the global payment infrastructure of Fiserv. While the underlying technology already processes billions of transactions around the world, our job is to make that infrastructure accessible to everyday merchants in Singapore through a simpler commercial model and a more modern customer experience.
What made Sambapay different from anything I had done before was that, for the first time in my career, I wasn't building the product itself. The technology already existed. I had no influence over the payment rails, the hardware, or the platform powering it.
Instead, my role became entirely commercial. I was responsible for turning an existing product into a business: defining our positioning, creating our go-to-market strategy, building the sales organization, designing our pricing model, developing partnerships, and understanding how to convince merchants to switch providers in one of the world's most competitive payments markets.
It was also my first experience operating outside Europe. Selling payment infrastructure to Singaporean business owners meant learning a completely new market, different buying behaviours, different commercial expectations, and a different competitive landscape. Rather than relying on product innovation, success depended on execution: understanding customers, communicating value clearly, and building a commercial engine capable of earning their trust.
It reinforced something I had started to realize over the years. The common thread in my career has never really been design, legal tech, or fintech. It has been understanding why people adopt products, and building the systems that help businesses grow around them.
Looking back, the common thread has never really been design, legal tech, or fintech but more about solving growth problems.
I've gradually moved from designing products, to building companies around them, to selling them. My background in design helps me understand what customers expect. My experience as a founder helps me understand what businesses need. Today, I spend most of my time making sure those two perspectives meet.
If you're building a product and thinking about growth, positioning, or distribution, I'd be happy to hear your story.
You can reach me at francois@end.agency.