Andy Budd

What they show

A homepage that names him as a design leader turned start-up advisor, VC and coach, with the organizations he founded (Clearleft, UX London, Leading Design, SofaConf) listed prominently as the proof. The nav is organized around what he offers now: coaching for product and design leaders, advisory work with early-stage companies, speaking, a podcast, and a guide for founders called The Growth Equation. A blog archive and newsletter sit underneath. The framing throughout is that design is a problem-solving approach grounded in human behavior, and that it's a competitive advantage rather than decoration.

Why it works at this level

It's the agency-founder version of the leadership portfolio, and it handles the hardest part well: an agency founder's 'work' is the agency and the community around it, not any single project. By listing the institutions he built (an agency, two conferences, a leadership community) as the headline credential, he makes twenty years legible in one line. The site is then honest that he's selling advice now, and organizes itself around the buyer of that advice. Read next to Matthew Holloway's and Aniruddha Kadam's entries, it completes the set of what leadership sites become after the operating role ends.

What to steal

If you've founded or built institutions (a team, a conference, a community, a practice), list them by name as your credentials; they outrank any project. Organize the site around what the visitor can get from you now. State your definition of design in a sentence; it's a fast way to signal how you think.

What I'd change

One thing I'd push on. Every site here is good; this is the note I'd send the author.

Clearleft's actual work, the projects that gave the agency its reputation, is invisible here. One page of 'what we made' would ground the advisory offer in evidence rather than reputation.