🌈👨💻 Building With Love: A Lesson in Product Design From Apple’s Jony Ive
Learn from a rare, revealing conversation with Sir Jony Ive on the values that shaped Apple’s most thoughtful work.
Hi everyone 👋
This week has been packed.
Stripe hosted their annual conference - Stripe Sessions - a three-day event with top-tier keynotes including Mark Zuckerberg and Sir Jony Ive. The focus: the future of payments.
We’ve seen phenomenal data on stablecoin growth and AI’s rising impact in fintech and banking (I shared more on this here with the latest stats).
Coinbase announced x402 - a protocol that could reshape payments for AI agents - responding directly to Visa and Mastercard’s recent moves (catch up here if you missed it).
Also in San Francisco, Figma held their annual conference Config for product builders and designers.
There were quite a few interesting releases such as:
Figma Sites (delightful websites designed, coded and hosted with Figma)
Figma Make (think of it as a v0 competitor to create coded product prototypes using AI)
Figma Buzz (a new marketing solution tailored around brand asset production).
And on another personal note, this week I also received my new Mac Studio 👨💻🥳⚡️
This AI beast lets me run models privately on my personal data (emails, docs, photos) without hitting the cloud. One cool tool I discovered is Kerlig.com that embeds AI across the OS (think of it as a AI spotlight, which works with your local models). Local-first AI is a game changer. More on that soon.
But today I want to zoom out from AI, APIs and protocols to something more timeless: Why and how we build.
At Stripe Sessions, Apple’s Jony Ive sat down with Patrick Collison for a rare, beautiful conversation, a meditation on care, design, and our responsibility as builders.
That message hits especially hard in fintech and digital banking, where it’s so easy to get buried in metrics, growth charts, and NPS scores. We end up optimising for efficiency, forgetting the soul of the product: the people. The customer behind the transaction. The team behind the code.
As Jony put it:
"When you make something with love and with care... it's a way of expressing our gratitude to the species."
That one line could be a manifesto for product teams.
10 Lessons From Sir Jony Ive For Every Fintech Builder
Sir Jony Ive is the design mind (and genius) behind some of the most recognisable products ever made, the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and more.
With Steve Jobs as a close friend and mentor, he spent nearly three decades at Apple designing tech with a focus on simplicity and stunning materials. After Apple, he founded LoveFrom, continuing to influence design for Apple but also other firms such as Airbnb or more recently OpenAI.
I highly recommend listening to the whole chat with Patrick Collison (link below). I wrote some of my top quotes and snippets from the session. To me, these lessons are vital. When understood and applied, they will give you an unfair advantage.
Let’s go.
"What we make stands testament to who we are."
Design isn’t a wrapper. It's an expression of values. Every product is a mirror to the mindset of its creators.
"Make things for each other. It makes you more vulnerable. It makes others grateful. That’s a lovely place to build from.”
It starts within your team. Jony shared how his team at Apple used to take turns making breakfast for each other every Friday. That small act created culture. Care scaled with the product.
"If you build something with love and care, even for someone you’ll never meet, they can feel it."
He described obsessing over the way a cable was coiled inside packaging. Why? Because millions of people would experience it. If uncoiling it felt easy, seamless, thoughtful, then they'd sense someone gave a damn.
"It’s not about breaking things. It’s about creating something better."
Jony pushed back on the glorification of disruption. Progress isn’t about chaos. It’s about thoughtful, shared evolution.
"You sense carelessness. So it’s reasonable to believe you also sense care."
Even when you don’t meet your users, the work speaks. A good cabinet maker paints the back of the drawer, even if no one will see it (something I learned from a young age
"The lie is: because we spend all our time talking about what we can measure, that’s all that matters. And that’s a lie."
Fintech folks: this one’s for us. We love a KPI. But the magic lives in the unmeasurable: trust, delight, connection.
"If I’m consumed with anxiety, that’s how the product will feel."
Your mindset as a builder is embodied in the product. Tense, rushed teams ship tense, rushed products.
"Trust and love each other. Because if you do, you might actually listen."
He warned of environments where people talk to be heard, not to listen. "Opinions aren’t ideas," he said. Big difference.
"Beauty evolves. It takes time."
He reflected on Bauhaus and early modernism - how energy often precedes refinement. Don’t rush the beauty.
"It's our obligation to care for one another. Not a byproduct. A responsibility."
This sums up his worldview: work is love made visible. Building is how we serve.
Upcoming events 🎤
If you are based in Dubai (or visiting) you must check out “Scaling Product Excellence: Lessons from the Best – How Challenger Banks Reached 10M Users”.
Hosted at Huspy Dubai, this panel features insights from leaders at Monzo (Fernando Fanton, Monzo CPO), Oak North, Finom, Allica, and Vision Bank.
It’s a must-attend for anyone interested in fintech product strategy and growth. Learn more and register here.
And again, if you’re heading to the Dubai Fintech Summit tomorrow or Tuesday, drop me a note. It’s shaping up to be an amazing event with 5-star fintech minds, ministers, and builders. Full agenda here
Thanks for reading, and see you next week on one-fs.
About Dom Monhardt, founder of one-fs.com
I am a French technologist and product leader living in Dubai, with 15+ years of experience in building cutting-edge and innovative digital experiences.
I am interested in the intersection of business, design, and technology and am deeply passionate about the fintech and digital banking world.
Great roundup, keep 'em coming.