Owna: an intellectual-property startup
Co-founder and Product Designer for the 0→1 development of a web platform for registering creative work, with legal validity in more than 180 countries and recommended security standards.
- Team
- Auclan Design, Hubess, and Sharecapital
- Role
- Product designer
- Year
- 2022
Context
Creativity is part of human nature. Drawing, composing, writing, photographing, and building products are ways of turning ideas into something that can be shared with the world.
The internet made creating and distributing work easier than ever, but it also increased exposure. In a global digital environment, authorship and copyright became increasingly important.
In 2022, I joined Owna as co-founder and Product Designer to work within this complex space between creativity, authorship, inspiration, and plagiarism.
Problem
Although original work carries moral rights from the moment it is created, proving authorship and protecting economic rights still depended on expensive, slow, and bureaucratic processes involving government offices, lawyers, notaries, or even registered mail.
While some platforms had already digitized the registration process, they remained heavily focused on the transaction itself, leaving important aspects of the user journey and overall experience unexplored.
Solution
Owna emerged from the need to simplify proof of authorship. The MVP combined intellectual property registration and management in one experience, from registering creative work to managing authors, rights holders, and digital certificates.
Each certificate used a SHA-256 hash, encrypted data, and a blockchain-signed timestamp to establish trust and legal validity.
User research and deep domain immersion revealed the journey’s main pain points and guided product decisions from the outset.
Closing thoughts
Once the MVP was complete, we ran a soft launch through communities and partners to validate the proposition. Despite the friction expected in an early version, the first months produced meaningful signals.
Balancing the studio and Owna was a valuable challenge. After one year of operation, changes in context and unforeseen constraints led the founders to jointly discontinue the product.
Owna remains a defining part of my journey. The experience continues to influence how I think about products, teams, and people in general.