Rise is a digital product studio that works exclusively with founders and entrepreneurs. We’re backed by 25 years of design and technology experience at Distinction – but we’re built specifically for the way startups actually work. Scrappy budgets, shifting requirements, ideas that need testing before they need building. Our team has started, scaled, and exited their own companies. So, when you tell us what’s keeping you up at night, we’re not guessing. We’ve been there.
Rise Digital Product Studio
Gold MemberRise helps ambitious founders turn startup ideas into real, working products – without the guesswork.
About
- HQ
- OFFICES
-
HEADQUARTERS
- ADDRESS: 7 Pancras Square, London, N1C 4AG
- PHONE: 44 2045729161
- E-MAIL: [email protected]
-
OFFICE
- ADDRESS: 2261 Market Street Suite 85873 San Francisco CA 94114
- PHONE: 3322918131
- E-MAIL: [email protected]
-
OFFICE
- ADDRESS: The Stanley Building 7 Pancras Square London N1C 4AG
- PHONE: 02045729161
- E-MAIL: [email protected]
Services
Digital Product Design
Mobile App Development
Industry Expertise
Finance
Sector Expertise
- Finance Software
- Investment Management
- Private Equity
- Venture Capital
- Wealth Management
- Banking
- Insurance
Healthcare
Sector Expertise
- Biotechnology
- Healthcare IT
- Medical Technology
- Medical Devices
Sports
Sector Expertise
- Action Sports
- Endurance Sports
- Esports Teams & Organizations
- Sports Events & Tournaments
- Sports Apparel & Equipment Manufacturers
- Sports Nutrition & Fitness
Startup
Sector Expertise
- Biotech & Pharmaceuticals
- CleanTech & GreenTech
- HealthTech
- LegalTech
- SportsTech
- Software & SaaS
- MedTech
- Startup Accelerators
Clients
Obu
Podium
HD Decisions
Lokr
Endura
MSM
Budgets
Min. project budget
拢5,000+
Min. monthly budget
拢5,000+
Case Studies
Podium: Launching the UK's first comparison-to-completion remortgage platform
Podium: Launching the UK's first comparison-to-completion remortgage platform
Rise Digital Product Studio
Podium launched on time as the first platform in the UK to take consumers from mortgage comparison all the way through to completed application 鈥 in one place, without jargon, and without the usual chaos. Since launch, it has grown to partner with leading high street lenders and power mortgage journeys across multiple distribution channels. The platform the founders asked Rise to help build became the commercial foundation for everything that followed.
Founders Matt Denman and Mark Hawkins brought over 35 years of combined fintech experience to the project, having previously built HD Decisions. They knew the mortgage market was ready to be disrupted 鈥 but the window wouldn鈥檛 stay open indefinitely. Other players were circling, and their JV partner MoneySupermarket had 16 million annual visitors leaving the site to complete applications elsewhere.
Speed mattered, but not at the cost of compliance.
Rise ran a genuinely Agile build 鈥 short sprints, frequent releases, continuous stakeholder involvement 鈥 connecting multiple data sources, integrating with lenders, building on top of IRESS product data, and maintaining FCA compliance throughout.
Design Thinking kept every decision grounded in one question: is this actually helpful to the person trying to get a mortgage?
Read on our website.
Client: Podium
Industry: Finance
Location: London, UK
Services
B2B Marketing
Digital Product Design
Digital Strategy
Software Development
UX Design
Web Development
Technologies: Design Thinking, UX/UI design, Agile development, API integration
Completed: Mar 2026
MoneySupermarket: Building a loan smart search platform against a national campaign deadline
MoneySupermarket: Building a loan smart search platform against a national campaign deadline
Rise Digital Product Studio
For the first time in the UK, consumers could search for a personal loan without it affecting their credit score 鈥 a feature that is standard practice today but didn鈥檛 exist before this project. Rise built MoneySupermarket鈥檚 loan smart search platform from scratch and delivered it in time for the launch of the brand鈥檚 multi-million pound national advertising campaign. The platform connected Experian鈥檚 soft-search credit data with MoneySupermarket鈥檚 consumer interface, showing users only the loans they were likely to be accepted for 鈥 and leaving no footprint on their credit file.
The problem being solved was genuinely broken: previously, a rejected loan application would damage a customer鈥檚 credit score, making the next application less likely to succeed. A downward spiral with no good outcome for the consumer or for MoneySupermarket, who only earned commission on successful applications. Rise worked on-site at Experian鈥檚 offices alongside MoneySupermarket鈥檚 senior leadership and HD Decisions to build the algorithms, connect the data points, and create the end-to-end user experience. Weekly progress demos and micro-deadlines kept the team focused. Breaking entirely new technical ground, within a tight deadline, and in a regulated financial services context. Not a small ask.
Read on our website.
Client: MoneySupermarket
Industry: Finance
Location: London, UK
Services
Digital Product Design
Software Development
UX Design
Web Design
Web Development
Technologies: UX design, Agile development, API integration, cloud architecture
Completed: Mar 2026
Pentland 天美传媒女优s: Validating a player-led custom kit platform before writing a single line of production code
Pentland 天美传媒女优s: Validating a player-led custom kit platform before writing a single line of production code
Rise Digital Product Studio
Pentland 天美传媒女优s – the group behind Endura, Speedo, Canterbury, and Berghaus – came to Rise not to build a platform, but to find out whether they *should* build one. The result was a validated proposition, a mid-fidelity prototype, and a clear decision framework for what to build next. No wasted development budget. No expensive pivot six months in.
The idea – internally called Made By You – was a digital platform where players, not team managers, could design and customise their own sports kit. A compelling concept, but one built on a stack of untested assumptions about user behaviour, pricing tolerance, and where it sat within Pentland’s broader brand ecosystem. Rise ran a series of innovation sprints using a Design Thinking methodology to surface those assumptions, identify which ones were the riskiest, and test them with real users before any production code was written. The team helped define the proposition clearly, mapped the primary user journeys (which turned out to involve more than just the players), and built an interactive prototype that was light enough to change direction cheaply but credible enough to generate meaningful feedback. The lesson here applies to any founder: if a company that owns Speedo thinks it’s worth testing an idea before committing to a full build, that should tell you something.
Client: Pentland
Industry: Sports
Sector Expertise: Sports Apparel & Equipment Manufacturers
Location: London, UK
Services
Creative
Digital Product Design
Digital Strategy
UX Design
Web Design
Technologies: Design Thinking, innovation sprints, mid-fidelity prototyping, proposition definition
Completed: Mar 2026
The Gruffalo: Building an immersive digital world that 3-to-8-year-olds didn't want to leave
The Gruffalo: Building an immersive digital world that 3-to-8-year-olds didn't want to leave
Rise Digital Product Studio
The Gruffalo鈥檚 Deep Dark Wood digital experience attracted over 35,000 average monthly users from more than 160 countries, achieved sub-two-second page load times, and held an average time-on-site of four minutes 鈥 with 10% of visitors spending over ten minutes per session. The site remained fundamentally unchanged for years after launch, with no expensive rebuild required. For a children鈥檚 brand with global reach and a notoriously complex stakeholder landscape, that鈥檚 a result worth talking about.
Pan Macmillan approached Rise ahead of The Gruffalo鈥檚 15th anniversary, with a brief to build a digital presence that finally matched the quality of everything else in the franchise 鈥 the toys, the TV specials, the live events. Rather than starting with the stakeholder list, Rise started by sitting down with children aged 3 to 8 and watching how they actually used devices. The insight that followed shaped everything: given the right experience, children were far more capable and autonomous on screens than adults assumed. The result was a fully immersive, mobile-first world illustrated by Aardman Animation, featuring singalongs with author Julia Donaldson, hidden Easter eggs, and a dual-layer design that served children and parents without either disrupting the other. Built on HTML5 and JavaScript, hosted on Azure, and designed to last.
Read on our website.
Client: The Gruffalo
Industry: Entertainment
Sector Expertise: Publishing Industry
Location: London, UK
Services
Content Marketing
Digital Strategy
Mobile App Development
Software Development
UX Design
Web Design
Technologies: User research, mobile app design & development, web design & development, go-to-market strategy
Completed: Mar 2026
Lokr Sports: Rescuing a stalled offshore build and shipping to the App Store in nine weeks
Lokr Sports: Rescuing a stalled offshore build and shipping to the App Store in nine weeks
Rise Digital Product Studio
Six weeks after Rise stepped in, Lokr Sports had an Alpha. Three weeks after that, the app was live on both the App Store and Google Play, rated 4.9 stars, winning new customers, and generating revenue. Pro athletes Katie and Ant Botha went from feeling like they were at the mercy of a process they couldn鈥檛 see into, to being in control of their own product again.
Lokr Sports is a coach-and-athlete development platform built for the serious amateur and elite academy market 鈥 the level where spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups still dominate, despite the performance data and personalised training tools that exist at the professional level. Katie and Ant had engaged an offshore development team to build the app 鈥 a rational decision for self-funded founders watching their runway. But without someone technically fluent in the room, scope crept, bugs multiplied, estimates ballooned, and the launch date kept sliding. Rise came on as a technical co-founder without the equity conversation: leading standups with the offshore team, reviewing and trimming scope to a sensible MVP, auditing every line of code, and 鈥 crucially 鈥 translating between the founders鈥 product vision and the developers鈥 technical reality. No rebuilding from scratch, no panic, just clarity and accountability applied to work that was salvageable but going sideways.
Read on our website.
Client: Lokr Sports
Industry: Sports
Location: Nottingham, UK
Services
Digital Product Design
Digital Strategy
Mobile App Development
Software Development
Web Development
Technologies: Technical oversight, scope review, offshore team management, code review, MVP delivery
Completed: Mar 2026
HD Decisions: From concept to launch in three months, and from launch to acquisition in three years
HD Decisions: From concept to launch in three months, and from launch to acquisition in three years
Rise Digital Product Studio
Within three years of Rise launching their platform, HD Decisions had won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award, built an enviable client base that included MoneySupermarket and Confused.com, and been acquired. The founders, Mark Hawkins and Matt Denman, exited the business. Three months from concept to launch. Three years from launch to exit.
The founding team were deep experts in consumer data and financial decision-making, and they鈥檇 spotted a genuine gap: a smart loan search service that used data to pre-qualify consumers before they applied for credit cards or loans, eliminating rejected applications and protecting credit scores.
What they didn鈥檛 have was a technical team, a platform, or any UI at all.
Rise moved fast 鈥 deliberately, not recklessly 鈥 and built a mobile-friendly, intuitive platform with the API layer that allowed credit bureau sites to connect and communicate. It went live within three months and embedded itself into aggregator sites immediately. But the build was only part of it.
Rise also help recruit and train the in-house team of over 50 people who would eventually run the platform independently. Because a startup permanently dependent on an external agency isn鈥檛 a startup with a future 鈥 it鈥檚 a startup with a recurring invoice.
Read on our website.
Client: HD Decisions
Industry: Finance
Location: Nottingham, UK
Services
Digital Product Design
Digital Strategy
Software Development
UX Design
Web Development
Technologies: Prototyping, MVP build, UI design, web development, digital branding, team recruitment and training
Completed: Mar 2026
OBU: Building a first-to-market fintech platform for women founders and investors
OBU: Building a first-to-market fintech platform for women founders and investors
Rise Digital Product Studio
Women founders in the UK receive just 2% of investment funding. Black women founders? 0.02%. Sarah King and Claire Dunn had lived that reality, and they wanted to fix it. Their vision: a fintech platform 鈥 鈥渁 bit like Bumble鈥 鈥 that matches women founders with women and ally angel investors.
They had deep domain expertise from careers in financial services, a compelling mission, and a market screaming for something better. What they didn鈥檛 have was a technical co-founder or a detailed product spec. So we started with discovery 鈥 getting under the skin of the business, mapping the end-to-end experience for both founders and investors, and scoping an MVP that was lean enough to launch on time but complete enough to actually work.
Building in a regulated space added real complexity: shareholder agreements, Companies House filings, ID verification, due diligence. Both teams were on a steep learning curve, and there were gnarly conversations about scope and timelines. When a third-party messaging integration fell over mid-build, we had a proof of concept for an alternative within 48 hours.
The platform launched on time in June 2023 鈥 first to market, inclusively designed, and fully operational in a regulated environment. Within months, OBU had facilitated over 拢290,000 in funding across two female-founded businesses. The project won two BIMA Awards, including Client of the Year.
Client: Obu
Industry: Finance
Services
B2B Marketing
Digital Product Design
Software Development
UX Design
Web Design
Web Development
Completed: Feb 2026
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Agency News
Release Date: Apr 2026
Distinction Launches Rise, a Digital Product Studio Built Exclusively for Startup Founders
UK-based customer experience and technology consultancy聽Distinction聽has launched聽Rise, a dedicated聽digital product studio聽built...
Distinction Launches Rise, a Digital Product Studio Built Exclusively for Startup Founders
Rise Digital Product Studio
UK-based customer experience and technology consultancy聽Distinction聽has launched聽Rise, a dedicated聽digital product studio聽built exclusively for founders and entrepreneurs. Backed by Distinction鈥檚 25 years of design and technology experience, Rise offers startup founders access to a multidisciplinary product team 鈥 strategists, designers, engineers, behavioural scientists and go-to-market specialists 鈥 structured specifically for the way early-stage companies actually work.
Why a separate studio?
Rise was born out of a pattern that Distinction鈥檚 leadership team kept seeing. Founders with genuinely promising ideas would approach the consultancy looking for help building digital products, but Distinction鈥檚 model 鈥 geared towards mid-sized B2B professional services firms and regulated industries 鈥 wasn鈥檛 set up for the realities of startup life: scrappy budgets, shifting requirements and ideas that need validating before they need building.
Rather than continuing to refer those founders to agencies and freelancers (and hearing the war stories that followed), Distinction co-founders James and Greg Bloor decided to build something purpose fit.
Rise sits in the gap between traditional digital agencies, which tend to maximise initial project scope, and freelancers, where founders are betting everything on one person鈥檚 knowledge and availability.
The studio operates as a standalone brand under the Distinction umbrella, with its own positioning, team and client base, while drawing on the parent company鈥檚 deep bench of technical and strategic capability.
A team that鈥檚 been on the other side of the table
What makes Rise鈥檚 proposition distinctive (no pun intended) is the founding team鈥檚 own entrepreneurial track record. James and Greg Bloor have both started, scaled and exited businesses of their own. That firsthand experience shapes how Rise engages with founders 鈥 the conversations tend to skip past agency pleasantries and land on the commercial realities of building a product with real money at stake.
The studio鈥檚 team spans product strategy, UX and UI design, software engineering, behavioural science, branding and go-to-market planning. Rise works with first-time founders who need guidance on where to start, non-technical founders who understand their market but need a partner to translate vision into working software, and serial entrepreneurs who want a team that can match their pace and push back when it matters.
Validation before investment
Rise鈥檚 approach centres on a principle that roughly 42% of failed startups learn too late: there needs to be a genuine market need for what you鈥檙e building. According to CB Insights research, lack of market demand remains the single biggest reason startups fail, followed closely by running out of cash.
Rise addresses both risks by prioritising validation before significant investment. The studio uses a phased roadmap model rather than monolithic builds, helping founders test ideas with real users before committing serious capital. The process is rooted in Design Thinking and Agile methodology, which in practice means the team continuously checks that they鈥檙e building the right thing 鈥 not just building a thing.
Each engagement begins with a discovery call, followed by a collaborative planning phase that maps out what to build, how to validate it and what it will cost. From there, the team works in iterative cycles with visible progress each week.
AI as a delivery accelerator, not a gimmick
Rise uses artificial intelligence extensively across its delivery process, but with a specific philosophy: AI should make delivery faster and better, not just look impressive in a pitch deck. The studio employs AI for rapid prototyping, AI-supported coding, faster iterations and quality assurance, drawing on its back catalogue of previous work to maintain consistency and quality.
This matters in context. Research from private-market investment advisors聽suggests that around 85% of AI models and projects fail due to poor data quality or lack of relevant data. Rise鈥檚 approach is to apply AI where it genuinely reduces cost and accelerates timelines for founders, rather than treating it as a feature to sell.
Full IP ownership for founders
One of Rise鈥檚 non-negotiables is that founders retain complete ownership of everything Rise creates 鈥 code, designs and documentation. This is a direct response to a common industry problem where founders find themselves in legal battles over intellectual property. Rise鈥檚 position is that everything built belongs to the founder, without exception.
Early traction and results
Despite being a new brand, Rise has already built a track record through projects incubated within Distinction. The studio鈥檚 portfolio includes work with fintech startups Obu (an angel investment platform focused on closing the gender investment gap) and Podium (a mortgage comparison platform), as well as projects for Klarus, Pentland 天美传媒女优s鈥 innovation team and Pan Macmillan鈥檚 Gruffalo digital experience.
Where Rise fits in the market
The UK startup ecosystem remains active, with new ventures launching daily across fintech, healthtech, SaaS and beyond. But the odds are sobering. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly one in five startups fails within its first year, and nearly half don鈥檛 make it past the five-year mark. First-time founders face particularly steep odds, with only an 18% success rate.
Rise鈥檚 bet is that many of those failures are preventable 鈥 that founders are being poorly served by development partners who either over-scope, under-resource or simply don鈥檛 understand the commercial pressures of building a product with your own money on the line. By combining Distinction鈥檚 enterprise-grade capability with a delivery model shaped around how startups actually operate, Rise aims to improve those odds for the founders it works with.
The studio is based in England, operates under Distinction Limited.
Agency: Rise Digital Product Studio
Published: Apr 2026