Diana Dalkevych
Diana works with fintech businesses when they grow, scale, or pivot. She helps founders and leadership teams articulate hypotheses, understand what drives customer behavior, weigh realistic options, and commit to a direction with an awareness of risks and opportunities.
Her career spans 11+ years across fintech, anti-fraud, supply chain, and industrial sectors, with clients across the UK, DACH, US, and MENA.
Key role at Goodface
Diana helps businesses decide how to move forward and works with key stakeholders on planning the next steps. She then stays close to implementation, working alongside the cross-functional team to keep execution aligned with the chosen direction.
Outside of commercial work, Diana runs nonprofit initiatives. And in her free time, she enjoys road trips, going for long walks, and writing fiction.
FAQ
Questions to expert
When does a FinTech company need to rethink its positioning?
Usually when the business has changed, but the market still sees the old version of it.
It happens when a company enters a new market, adds a new product, or starts working with a different customer segment. The business moves forward, but its messaging stays where it was.
At some point, the gap becomes difficult to ignore.
What do you look at when researching a market?
I start with what the company already believes about its market and customers. Then I look for evidence that supports those beliefs — or challenges them.
Customer conversations, competitor research, market data, existing analytics: each gives us a different view. What matters is putting those views together and seeing what is actually happening.
How do you know when a positioning problem is really a communication problem?
Sometimes the positioning is clear inside the company, but it doesn't survive contact with the outside world.
The team knows what the product does and why it matters. A customer sees a website, a sales deck, or a product page and gets a different picture. When that happens, I look at how the proposition is being communicated across the business — and where the meaning gets lost.
How does the work change when a company is building, scaling, or pivoting?
The starting point is different. With Build, we need to understand what the business is trying to bring to the market and why someone would choose it. With Scale, there is usually more evidence to work with, so we look at where the existing proposition still fits and where it needs to change. With a Pivot, we go back to the assumptions behind the business and work out what is worth carrying forward.
What makes research useful for a business decision?
Research becomes useful when it changes what you do next.
There is little value in collecting information just to make a strategy deck look complete. The point is to find something that affects the decision — a customer need the team underestimated, a market constraint they hadn't considered, or a positioning that no longer matches the business.
What do you enjoy most about this work?
The moment when something that seemed complicated starts to make sense.
A project might begin with a vague feeling that “something isn't working.” Then you speak to customers, look at the market, review the product, and eventually see where the problem actually sits.
That moment is always interesting. You have something real to work with, and the next decision becomes much clearer.
