How to judge a founding designer's portfolio: 20 examples
Guide · 10 min read · By Utkarsh Dhairya Panwar · Updated
Judge a founding designer's portfolio by what they owned, not by how polished it looks. Look for a role stated plainly, shipped work at a real startup, range across product, website and brand, and honest outcomes. Below are 20 founding designer portfolios I checked in October 2026, unranked.
Read this first
This page is for founders hiring a first designer. It lists 20 public portfolios from people who say, on their own site, that they were the founding or first designer at a startup, and it notes what each one does well. It isn't a ranking. The groups describe the kind of founding role, and names inside each group run A to Z.
I'm the founding designer at CodeAnt AI (YC W24), so I've left myself out. Nobody paid or asked to be included, and I haven't contacted anyone on the list. Want to be added, corrected or removed? Email work@utkarshdesign.com.
What to look for in a founding designer's portfolio
I sit on the Awwwards Young Jury (2026) and I've judged the Cognizance design hackathon at IIT Roorkee. Judging taught me to read a lot of work quickly by checking the same few things every time. A founder reading portfolios between calls is in the same position, so these are the signals I check first.
- The role is stated plainly: Company, dates, title and who they worked with. "Founding designer, sixth employee, 2020 to 2025" tells you more than a paragraph of adjectives. If you can't tell what they owned versus what a team did, ask.
- The first case study is real, shipped work: A redesign of a famous app shows taste. A shipped onboarding flow at a ten-person startup shows the job. The best portfolios here put the startup work first and the side projects after.
- Range across product, website and brand: Your first designer will design the app on Monday and the launch page on Thursday. Look for at least two of the three, done for the same company, so you can see one person's judgement hold across them.
- Decisions made without a brief: Founders rarely write design specs. Good founding portfolios show the moment the designer chose what to build or what to cut, and why. Studies and product visions count here too.
- Outcomes stated honestly: A real number with context beats a big number with none. A short retro on something that didn't work is a good sign: you'll get the same honesty in your Monday review.
- How they build: Many founding designers now prototype in code or with AI tools, and ship websites themselves in Framer. If you need someone to build as well as design, look for working links and process notes.
What I discount: mockups with no company named, long tool lists, and process diagrams that look the same in every case study. NDA work is fine. Several people below say so and offer a walkthrough on a call, which is the right way to handle it.
Founding designers who stayed and built the system
These designers stayed past launch. Their portfolios show what a founding designer leaves behind: a design system, a team or a way of working.
| Designer | Founding role, as they state it | Portfolio | What a founder should notice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christiane Oubly | Solo product designer in a founding designer role at Leeto, an early-stage SaaS startup (2020 to 2024) | christianeoubly.framer.website | The Leeto work reads like an owner's: a business-accounts redesign and the in-house UI kit she built, shown with their effect on NPS, support tickets, design QA and design debt. |
| Julian Kraan | Founding designer and sixth employee at Abacum, a financial planning startup (2020 to 2025) | juliankraan.framer.website | His résumé says what changed in five years: design grew from one person to a team through Series B growth. The Abacum case is an interactive product vision, the kind of work founders need and rarely see shown. |
| Pablo Barrera | Founding designer at Obie, from 2021 | pablobarrera.framer.website | Opens with the business context of his work at Obie, then the case studies. A separate NDA work page is an honest way to show work that can't be public. |
| Sanja Dimitrijevic | Founding product designer on the Rosemood and kartenmacherei apps | sanjaproductdesign.framer.website | Each project states team size, timeline and results in plain blocks, and explains why a white-label base still needed its own design system. |
| Will dos Santos | Founding member and head of design at GoGoPool (now Hypha); an earlier founding designer role from 2019 | wills-portfolio-murex.vercel.app | A dated work history shows each step from front-end designer to founding roles. He also publishes his process from idea to developer handoff, which is what you'd ask about in an interview anyway. |
Founding designers who covered product, brand and marketing
At seed stage one designer often does all of it. These portfolios show that range inside a single company, which is the strongest evidence you'll get.
| Designer | Founding role, as they state it | Portfolio | What a founder should notice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthony Jibueze | Founding product designer at C-orb (2024) | tonyjibueze.framer.website | He designs and builds websites himself, and the C-orb case covers a product that mixes community, commerce and payments. |
| Frankpeter Ani | Founding designer at Tempo AI (YC S23), January 2024 to September 2026 | dazeign.framer.website | Testimonials come from founders he worked with, including Tempo AI's CEO. He keeps full walkthroughs for calls instead of publishing everything. |
| Harsh Potphode | Founding product designer at Runable (2026) and before that at Bolo AI (2024 to 2025) | harshpotphode.framer.website | Projects are short stories, one about the design work behind Bolo AI's seed round. Full walkthroughs are offered on a call. |
| Harshit Singh | Founding designer at Monk CI, a pre-seed CI/CD startup (2025 to 2026) | madebyhx.framer.website | One line says he built both the brand and the whole product. Interaction studies, such as a cancel flow, show how he works when nobody hands him a spec. |
| Karthikeyan Krishnamoorthy | Founding designer at CultureMonkey, an employee engagement product | kkchimpy.framer.website | Project titles are outcomes, and one is a failure he explains. That candour is rare and useful in a first designer. |
| Varun T R | Founding designer at Dodo Payments | varuntr.framer.ai | One case covers brand identity, the app and marketing, including replacing a long Airtable verification form with a step-by-step flow. |
| Vivek Sharma | Founding designer at Jumbo, a gaming app | viveksharma.framer.website | He lists what he made alone: the app's screens, graphics, icons, animations and copy. You can see the full scope one designer covered. |
| Woobie Cheung | Founding UX/UI designer at Pantheon Lab (2019 to 2021); founding product designer at Witty Waves Studio (2023 onward) | woobiehoi.framer.website | A year-by-year timeline makes both founding roles easy to spot, and the services cover product, no-code websites and brand identity. |
| Yaroslav Makovetskyi | Founding UI/UX designer at SureIn, a digital insurance startup in Germany (2023 onward) | yaroslavmako.framer.website | Shows range: a self-service funnel plus a rebrand and website at SureIn, and an interactive investor prototype made for a Series A round. |
Founding designers on technical, AI or regulated products
If your product is for developers, runs on AI or sits in health or finance, look for someone who has designed the rules behind the screens. These portfolios show that work.
| Designer | Founding role, as they state it | Portfolio | What a founder should notice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Camille Bonnifay | Founding product designer at Pixpay, a fintech app for teens and parents | camillebonnifay.framer.website | The Pixpay work is split into the teen app and the parents' app, which shows two users with different needs designed inside one product. |
| Dimitra Chrysikou | Founding product designer at RadPass, a radiotherapy clinical system, and at CatchMetrics | dimitra.framer.website | She models ownership and every state before drawing screens, builds the design system in code, and prototyped in Bolt before engineering started. |
| Ivy Mukherjee | Founding designer at Gradient Labs (AI support agents for financial services) and earlier at Inscribe | ivymukherjee.framer.website | She says who she worked with each day (CEO, CTO, an AI scientist, ML engineers) and what didn't exist when she joined, so you can judge the real scope of the role. |
| Ivy Thong | Founding designer at Aidaly and at Foodable | ivythong.framer.website | A short page with clear titles: each case names the problem first, such as onboarding through complex Medicaid paths. The Foodable piece is written as a retro. |
| Jakub Krehel | Founding design engineer at Interfere (YC S25, per the YC directory) | jakub.kr | His site is mostly writing and open-source tools, including a post on how Interfere's website was built. For a design engineer, that public work is the evidence. |
| Radhika Lal | Founding product designer at DoWhile AI (formerly Collectiv AI), from July 2023 | radesign.framer.website | Each role lists its result beside it: retention, NPS and user growth for a developer-facing natural-language interface. |
What these portfolios have in common
- All 20 name the startup. That was my first filter here, and it's the first one I'd use when hiring.
- 18 of the 20 are built in Framer; the other two aren't. I searched Framer-hosted portfolios heavily, so it says more about my search than about founding designers in general.
- The strongest ones lead with one company and go deep, instead of eight small projects of equal weight.
- Several show product and brand for the same startup. That's the clearest proof of a generalist, and it's what most seed-stage teams need first.
- The ones I'd shortlist fastest explain a decision: what they cut, what they tested, what they'd do again.
Using a portfolio in the interview
A portfolio gets someone to the first call. On the call, pick one case study and ask the designer to walk you through it as if you were the founder at the time: what was broken, who decided, what shipped, what they'd change. You'll learn more in 20 minutes of that than from any page.
For when to hire, which contract to offer and the red flags I'd watch for, see my guide to hiring your founding designer. If you don't have candidates yet, start with where to find a designer, which compares the channels founders use.
How I picked
- Checked on 8 October 2026 by opening each portfolio. If a site didn't load, the person was left out.
- Included only people whose own site says they were the founding or first designer (or founding design engineer) at a startup they name.
- Each portfolio shows that startup work in a case study or a written account. A single line on a résumé wasn't enough.
- Left out: Framer templates with fictional people, sites that don't name the company, and roles described only in someone else's testimonial.
- Roles and companies are written as each person states them. I added only the YC batch for Interfere, from the YC startup directory.
- No personal details beyond name, role, company and portfolio link.
Want to be added, corrected or removed? Email work@utkarshdesign.com.
Questions people ask
What should a founding designer's portfolio include?
At least one startup they name, with the role and dates, and one case study of shipped work. The best also show range across product, website and brand for that same company, and explain the decisions they made without a brief.
How do I evaluate a portfolio if most of the work is under NDA?
Ask for a walkthrough on a call. Good founding designers expect this, and several portfolios above say so outright. Judge how clearly they explain the problem, the decision and the result.
Are these designers available to hire?
I don't know. I listed public portfolios, not candidates, and I didn't contact anyone. Check each site for their current role.
Sources
Working on this?
Tell me what you're building and where it's stuck: book a 30-minute call, email work@utkarshdesign.com or send a brief.