Supported teams raising $13m+
Early design decisions shape everything that follows.
First Form Design™ helps startups and studios align brand, product, and website while the foundations are still flexible.
Trusted across Europe and the US
The situation
The model works. Now early design decisions start to matter.
What created early traction won’t carry the next phase
Your deck tells one story, your product another, and your website a third. Investors notice the gaps. Enterprise buyers hesitate. Structural friction compounds quietly and often faster than technical debt.
You're refining positioning while scaling execution
Your company is moving upmarket. Messaging evolves, use cases expand, and your ICP shifts from early adopters to mainstream buyers. Design decisions that were made at launch start to resist that shift. What once worked becomes harder to extend.
Hiring creates more problems than it solves right now
Hiring a design lead means months of recruiting, months of ramping, and significant cost before real progress appears. Agencies often introduce another layer of process. What is needed instead is experienced design work that moves at the same pace as the company.
Everything was assembled for survival, not scale
The MVP shipped with whatever worked at the time. Contractors delivered isolated pieces such as landing pages, product UI, and brand fragments. Nothing necessarily failed, but there is no coherent system underneath. Growth begins to stack on foundations that were never meant to carry it.
Growth capital expects operational maturity.
Design signals whether a company has moved from “figuring it out” to “ready to execute at scale.” Strengthen the foundations now or rebuild them later at a much higher cost.
Selected work
Supported teams through critical inflection points
Bauplan, San Franciso
$7.5m raised
Brand and web design positioning for enterprise data engineering tool kit.
Branding
UX Design
Web Design
Framer
„We love our branding. You did an amazing job!“
Ciro Greco
Co-Founder, Bauplan
Flowers, Munich
€6m raised
Product design system supporting feature velocity through €6m growth stage.
Product UX/UI
Design System
reteach, Berlin
€1.5m raised
Visual refresh for a German e-learning platform entering its next growth phase.
Brand refresh
UX Design
Web Design
Our framework
Flexible foundations, strategic decisions
Built for your next phase, not your final state
The goal is not to design for every possible future. The goal is to support the next phase of the company without creating unnecessary complexity.
Systems are built to hold the next 12–18 months of growth. Visual language adapts as positioning evolves. Product architecture leaves room for new capabilities without forcing constant redesign.
Strategic design, not executional throughput
This work is not about producing more screens. It is about making the right decisions before they harden into product and brand structure.
Questions like these shape the system early: How should positioning differentiate against established players? How should product structure reflect the company’s strategy? What trade-offs support speed without losing clarity?
Those decisions compound over time.
Everything connects, nothing locks you in
Brand informs product. Product informs positioning. The website reflects both.
When those layers evolve separately, friction appears. When they are shaped together, decisions reinforce each other.
Cohesion does not mean rigidity. Systems should adapt as the company learns. When positioning shifts or the product evolves, the foundations can flex without requiring rebuilds.
Foundation Program
Strategic design infrastructure
Establish the foundations for your next phase. Brand, product, and website are shaped together so positioning, product structure, and marketing evolve as one system.
Investment
€24k
~12 weeks
Scope includes
Visual direction
Marketing infrastructure (designed + built)
Product design system and core flows
Documentation and extensibility
Best for
Teams that need strong design foundations before building an internal design team.
Ongoing Design Support
Embedded design capacity
Senior design partner working alongside your team. Strategic guidance and hands-on execution as positioning evolves and the product continues to grow.
€8k
per month
Coverage
Embedded in your team
Strategic guidance
Shipping every week
Cancel every month
Best for
Teams with existing infrastructure that need experienced design support.
„Felix is a delight to work with“
Avantika Prabhakara
Co-Founder, Honey Homes
Open letter
On building for scale
You're not building the final system. You're building the next foundation.
Positioning will refine. Features will ship and disappear. Your ICP may shift. Messaging evolves as teams learn what resonates.
Design locked into today's assumptions quietly turns into tomorrow's constraints.
You do not need a logo system with dozens of variations. You need a strong mark that works everywhere.
You do not need ten marketing pages. You need a few that convert and can expand as the go-to-market motion evolves.
You do not need every edge case designed. You need core flows that represent most of the product's value, supported by patterns that extend naturally.
Strong foundations allow systems to evolve without constant rebuilding. Strategic decisions made early make the next hundred decisions easier.
The goal is simple: establish the foundations required to move from traction to execution. Everything else can come later.
Ready to strengthen your design foundations?
Articles
