Our story starts a few years ago:

Tired of traditional agencies, we started working with founders at the earliest stages. There’s more to design than deliverables and gantt charts, and there’s more to see through when working hand in hand with founders during the make it or break it stages.

We helped build some great things, and some turned into great companies.

And we soon started to wonder what makes the difference between the companies many admire and the rest of them.

Turns out, that’s a hard question to answer. And it’s not just about buying good design.

It’s about intuition and taste. If you sprinkle some of that into promising ideas, it can be a systemic edge for startups through all stages of their lifecycle.

Founding teams that bring design sensibility to the table can outperform their competition and inspire categories. We’ve worked with some that make great examples, like Attio.

In reality, not all founding teams have a design co-founder, and it puts them at a disadvantage as they navigate through the stages it takes to build a great company.

We aspire to be the next best thing.

Up until the end of 2021, we ran a design studio that embedded into earlier stage startups. And things were going really well.

Except that there was no organic end date to the engagement.

When Pipe offered to acquire our studio and eventually did, many of our other companies were left a bit stranded. So, naturally, we helped them hire.

This sparked a short stint where we ran a recruiting agency focused on design.

It was a good business on paper. But we quickly learned that we didn’t want to be a recruiting agency. It just doesn’t feel like good business.

Hiring for a company that isn’t attractive yet isn’t going to allow them to hire great designers. It won’t help them in the long run. It also feels like a disservice to the founders and the designer.

So at the end of 2023, when we we had left a mark on Pipe, we started over again.

And so here we are.

It’s the culmination of all our previous learnings.

We want more startups to grow into great businesses that can win on design sensibility. And we realise that in almost all cases, the end result is having a great in-house team that will continuously produce great work.

But the path there also requires reaching a certain level of attractiveness to make the first step.

It’s about building culture around design, designing a great product, and an attractive brand. And that requires showing up and building all those things.

So today, we help companies develop intuition and taste.

And then we help them hire, so it lasts.