01
Design strategy
Find the highest-leverage path from product friction to a coherent product and system strategy.
The design expertise your team needs. A product your customers will love.
I'm an independent design partner for growth-stage startups, helping my clients create products customers love—and design systems their teams use to ship great design fast.
Book an intro callMy approach
My first goal is always building a product your users love.
This means rolling up my sleeves and shipping a great product.
- Making your product simple, beautiful, and easy to use.
- Simplifying complex features
- Self-serve onboarding flows that convert
- Creating design systems to use across all products
- Understanding the founders' vision and bringing it to life
My second goal is making great design part of your company’s DNA.
The key to lasting great UX is building systems that support design as your company scales.
This usually involves setting up AI tooling for UI code generation, hiring great designers, setting up usability testing, establishing good engineering habits, and educating founders about design.
A typical engagement for me includes:
- Lightweight advising and prototypes during early seed stage (optional)
- One or more intensive design/build phases (~4 months each), usually after raising a seed or series A.
- Supporting the transition to an in-house design team (also optional)
About
I help founders turn the product they have into the product their customers, team, and next stage of growth require.
My niche is supporting founders of data-heavy B2B apps through early concept through design and scaling teams. I've also been a YC cofounder, solo indie hacker, design team manager, product manager, and design teacher.
Read full bioHow it works
What a design engagement looks like
A rigorously tested process to get you to the right outcome—quickly and reliably.
02
Design and build
Create the product quality, system, and adoption habits that let teams move faster without lowering the bar.
03
Advisory support
Keep a senior design partner close as the organization learns to carry the work forward.
Proof
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
It all starts with a conversation. 100% free for founders.
Tell me a little about your company, then choose a time to talk through what growth requires next.