Insights from Silicon Valley veteran Blagoja Golubovski on the essential do's and don'ts of scaling a design team, covering product-led culture, process building, and the mindset needed for sustainable long-term growth.
Our guest for this chapter of the WandrFul Design Podcast was Blagoja Golubovski, the Vice President of Product at Visit.org. He is a Silicon Valley veteran with over 25 years of technical and product management experience where he’s helped design and promote software for verticals, including FinTech, promotions, advertising, and semiconductors. He speaks at industry events and customer forums and is widely recognized as an expert in enterprises and software technology. Blagoja is responsible for visit.org’s product strategy, innovation, and design and development, driving and building beautiful products to increase purpose-driven employee engagement across the world.
The Startup of You - Reid Hoffman “It’s an amazing book that teaches you how to take the startup mentality and apply it to your own life. Like the cycle of adaptation, learning, taking risks, experimenting, and then just rinse and repeat.”
“It’s important to show progress and show success, that the things that we’re actually doing right now are foundational blocks for scale.”
Check out our Podcast Episode 9 on Scaling in a Design Team with Blagoja Gobulovski
Scaling in a Design team might sound tricky. As your team grows, you need to establish a product-led culture and put transparent processes in place for productivity to always be high. Be aware that many team members might resist so many changes in little time, but be patient and make them aware that you are building a foundation for future success.
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Scaling a design team means strategically growing its size, processes, and capabilities to meet increasing product demands without sacrificing quality or culture. It involves establishing clear goals, transparent workflows, and a product-led culture that allows the team to expand sustainably and deliver consistent results at a larger scale.
A product-led culture places the product and its impact on users at the center of every team decision. When scaling a design team, establishing this culture early ensures that growth is guided by clear objectives and user needs rather than reactive hiring or disorganized processes, creating a stronger foundation for long-term success.
Key actions when scaling include establishing a product-led culture, putting clear processes in place, aligning the entire team on shared goals, communicating a strong vision, keeping everyone involved, and deeply understanding your customers and users. Accepting that scaling is a slow process and trusting the foundational work being done is equally critical.
When a team grows, misalignment on goals becomes increasingly costly. Ensuring that every team member understands and is working toward the same objectives keeps efforts coordinated, reduces wasted work, and creates a sense of shared purpose that sustains motivation even as processes and structures continue to evolve.
Blagoja recommends "The Startup of You" by Reid Hoffman, describing it as a book that teaches readers how to apply a startup mentality to their own careers and lives. The core lessons around adaptation, learning, risk-taking, and experimentation are directly applicable to leading and scaling product design teams.
