Product & Design Lead
Hugo Welke
Hugo Welke is a product designer and design leader with 15+ years of experience building digital products that scale. He led design through hypergrowth at companies including Canva and HubSpot, and is now focused on the intersection of AI and human-centred design. He believes AI gave everyone the same superpower — and that design thinking is what separates useful work from noise.
Session Details
Design Principles for the Vibe-Coding Era
The cost of building software has collapsed, which means the next generation of internal tools at startups won't be built by engineers or designers — they'll be built by the people who feel the problem most acutely. This talk gives people-ops leaders the product design fundamentals they need so the tools they build actually work.
What you'll leave with:
- A working definition of product design that doesn't require a design background.
- A validation framework they can run before they build anything — so they stop shipping tools nobody uses.
- A diagnostic for "is this working?" — concrete signals to look at when a tool ships.
Tickets
Come for the day. Stay for the year. Choose your pass.
Final tickets are now selling. Choose the pass that works for you. However you join us, you’ll get access to the ideas, people and sessions shaping startup People teams right now.
Get in while you still can. SPS 2026 kicks off in:
Final Release
The full SPS 2026 experience. Live sessions across 5 tracks, real-time Q&As with speakers, guided networking built into the day, and your event workbook.
This is the one. Be in the room.
Join the sessions you can live, then catch the rest on replay for the next 12 months.
$385
Company Pass
Bring your whole People team to SPS for one flat fee, with live access for your team, and 12 months of replay included.
A simple way to turn SPS into a shared learning experience.
Sales close 2 September (AEST).
$1,100
Replay Pass
Can’t join us live? Get the complete SPS 2026 session library and watch every session and every speaker at any time.
It's not the same as being in the room, but it means you won't miss a thing.
Price rises to $360 on 4 September (AEST).
$345
Need a little flexibility? BNPL options are available at checkout.
Most attendee's choose to use their L&D budget for their ticket, and Startup People Summit is easily expensed. Here's a template to help you make the case to your boss.
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SPS 2026 is powered by the companies People leaders actually work with. They're the platforms your team runs on, and the people building what comes next for our function. Get to know them.
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