Product Design for Startups

The design expertise your team needs. A product your customers will love.

I'm an independent design partner for growth-stage startups.

Whether it's fractional design leadership or full-scale agentic design systems, I'm here to support your team with great design through your next phase of growth.

Design collaboration workshop

My approach

My #1 goal: Design something your users love

I've been working with startups for 20 years to make their products simple, beautiful, modern, and easy to use.

I specialize in:

  • Simplifying complex features
  • Self-serve onboarding flows that convert
  • Creating design systems to use across multiple products
  • Understanding founders' vision and bringing it to life
  • Polishing design details until your product shines
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Sam and Kelsey collaborating at a whiteboard

I want to make great design part of your company’s DNA

The key to lasting great UX is building systems that support design as your company scales.

I help the people closest to your users make better design decisions and ship with confidence.

This usually involves:

  • Design office hours
  • Design feedback
  • 1:1 design workshops
  • Usability testing help
  • Design mentorship
  • Hiring help
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Resources to improve your team's design

How to talk to users

A founder-friendly guide to learning from usability tests and conversations with users.

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The founder’s guide to hiring product designers Clients only

A practical checklist for hiring a designer who fits your product, team, and stage.

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Founder-fit assessment

A short assessment to help you decide whether a design partnership is the right next move for your company.

Design team health scorecard

A rubric for determining the health of your team’s design function.

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Product design 101 Clients only

A quick introduction to the basics of UX design and design theory.

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Services

Two ways to bring senior design expertise to your team

Testimonials

What my clients have to say

“I’m Frodo, and Sam’s my Gandalf. I’m so grateful to have Sam on this project, I don’t know where I would be without him (probably pulling my hair out). If you’re struggling with a big design project, my advice is this: get yourself a Sam.”
Liza Pagano

Art Director, Ithaka/JSTOR; previously JSTOR

“Sam is a UX god. We were blown away by how quickly he broke down our complex goals into a simple, beautiful, intuitive design. Not only did we launch an awesome product on time, but the work went way above and beyond our expectations. He taught us a ton about building great products, and he laid the foundation for our engineers to keep building great designs. Our only regret is that we didn’t book more of his time!”
Jason Corso

CEO and co-founder, Voxel51 A.I. Platform

“We brought Sam in to polish our web app’s design, expecting him to simply tidy up the rough edges. He did that brilliantly, freeing our team to move faster while keeping the bar high. What we didn’t expect was that his UX workshop for our engineers would become one of the most valuable investments we’ve made. Our team now instinctively thinks about user experience as they build.”
Raj Dosanjh

Cofounder/CTO, Paid.ai; previously Palantir

“Sam is an incredibly talented product designer and coach. He was instrumental in helping FarmLogs design a product and brand that quickly became recognized for our ease of use, igniting years of rapid growth for our company.”
Jesse Vollmar

CEO and co-founder, FarmLogs; YC alumnus

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Book an intro call. 100% free for founders.

Choose a time for a free intro call to talk through what growth requires next.

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