Circa CEO Matt Galligan launches consultancy to help startups with product design and ideation

Circa co-founder Matt Galligan has revealed what he’s going to do next. In a post on Medium, he announced plans to launch a new consultancy with the idea of sharing insights he’s gleaned from his time at Circa, specifically as relates to product design and strategy.

“Product is my absolute passion, ideas are my oxygen, and seeing something through the whole process gives me an immense amount of energy. It would be great if I could fill most of my week with continuing that passion, especially if it’s not with my own ideas,” Galligan wrote.

Areas of interest where he says he’ll focus include mobile apps, consumer plays, “market disruptors”, messaging and conversational user interface, and enterprise tools.

The move toward consultancy seems a natural one for Galligan. As a serial entrepreneur (founding Socialthing, SimpleGeo, and Circa), he is well aware of the issues startups deal with. He has experience advising other companies, including those that went through the TechStars accelerator program. Galligan is certainly credentialed when it comes to developing mobile apps and knows how to apply design savvy to products.

His last company, news organization Circa, shut down in June after serving readers for three years. It wasn’t able to raise an additional round, after its initial $6 million in funding. Circa cofounder Ben Huh also recently announced what’s next for him — he has stepped down as CEO from his latest company, Cheezburger, and will take an “unscripted adventure.”

Through his consultancy, Galligan says he’ll take on projects ranging from one and two-day engagements (for both ideation and brainstorming), multi-week sprints to establish a strategic plan for companies, and “retainer-based arrangements to continually give time.”