Ep #12: James Storer (Monzo): Fake Banks, Real Learning, and Being Monzo's Biggest Token Burner

Tom and Jonny sit down with James Storer, who leads design in Monzo's AI and personalisation collective and is the biggest token burner in the whole company. They dig into the fake Monzo his team built to prototype with, why he stepped off the leadership track to get back in the tools, and what he went to Config to ask Figma.

CHAPTERS

• 00:00 Introducing James Storer
• 02:12 Why go back to doing the work after leading teams
• 10:13 The founder's fight: ship it, or make it better
• 14:47 Being a loud mouth turned out to be the skill
• 18:35 AI lowers the floor, so who raises the ceiling
• 25:30 Everyone an expert in everything, or still not enough hours
• 28:01 Building hardware when you can't solder
• 30:07 Should there be an app store with one user
• 33:43 Is the value the software, or making it with your kid
• 36:08 The UNO clone his six-year-old wanted to explode
• 40:01 A 69-year-old vicar and the church website
• 41:31 The messy middle: AI inside a regulated bank
• 43:44 A fake Monzo with fake money
• 49:36 Handoff should be a handshake
• 54:16 "What will you do to make me open you every day?"
• 60:39 Quickfire
• 68:31 Wrap

PEOPLE

• James Storer — Design Lead, AI & Personalisation, Monzo https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesstorer/
• Avi Ashkenazi, Deel — previous Near Future guest, on raising the floor and the ceiling https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviashkenazi/
• Jake Knapp — author of Sprint — https://www.jakeknapp.com
• Simon from Morse — spoke alongside James at Mostly Working https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-amor/

COMPANIES

• Monzo — https://monzo.com
• Deliveroo — https://deliveroo.co.uk
• Freetrade — https://freetrade.io
• Habito — https://www.habito.com
• Klarna — https://www.klarna.com
• Twist — James's design agency
• Jitty — the house-buying startup James co-founded

TOOLS AND PRODUCTS MENTIONED

• Cursor — https://cursor.com
• Claude Code — https://claude.com/product/claude-code
• ChatGPT — https://chatgpt.com
• Figma — https://figma.com
• Figma Make, Figma Weave, code layers — announced at Config
• FigJam — https://figma.com/figjam
• Lovable — https://lovable.dev
• Stitch — https://stitch.withgoogle.com
• NotebookLM — https://notebooklm.google.com
• Notion — https://notion.com
• Linear — https://linear.app
• Abstract — version control for Sketch files
• Sketch — https://sketch.com
• Three.js — https://threejs.org
• React Native — https://reactnative.dev
• Nano Banana — Google's image model, via Gemini
• Hex — open-source dictation app
• Wispr Flow — https://wisprflow.ai
• Wabi — personal app builder for iPhone
• MeatLayer — agents paying humans for real-world tasks — https://meatlayer.ai
• M5Stack — small dev boards — https://m5stack.com
• Lumi / ROLI — light-up keyboards, now open sourced — https://roli.com
• BigQuery — https://cloud.google.com/bigquery

ALSO REFERENCED

• Config 2026 — Figma's conference — https://config.figma.com
• Mostly Working — Tom's design and AI meetup in London https://luma.com/mostly-working
• Sprint, by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz
• UNO — the card game James and his son cloned as "Duo"

NEAR FUTURE

• Podcast — https://nearfuture.works/podcast
• Get in touch — [email protected]