Fractional Design Lead

Senior design leadership for founders who need clarity, direction, and better decisions—without hiring full-time.

The Shift

As products mature, design problems stop being about screens and start being about tradeoffs:

What to focus on. What to ignore. How to avoid building the wrong thing.

As a Fractional Design Lead, I work closely with founders to guide those decisions with experience, context, and judgment—without becoming a long-term hire.

This isn't task-based design work. It's senior-level guidance where direction matters more than output volume.

What This Looks Like

You get ongoing access to senior design judgment—so decisions don't bottleneck, drift, or get revisited repeatedly.

In practice, this means:

  • Fast, opinionated feedback on work in progress
  • Clear guidance on which ideas are worth pursuing—and which aren't
  • Early input before features, flows, or systems harden
  • Fewer redesigns and less second-guessing
  • A clearer product direction week to week

Recent example: Helped a founder realize their onboarding was solving the wrong problem. We cut 4 screens, kept the core value, and saw conversion improve.

Best For

This works best if:

  • You're a founder with a live product and roughly 100-10,000 active users
  • You've raised pre-seed or seed, or you're at a similar stage of complexity
  • You're deciding what to build next—and what to delay or drop
  • You need to move faster without weakening the product foundation
  • You want senior judgment involved before decisions are locked in

Too early for this? If you're still figuring out priorities or diagnosing core issues, a one-time UX & Product Audit may be a better starting point.

Why Founders Work With Me

  • I've built, scaled, and sold companies—including taking a product from zero to acquisition
  • I've worked inside startups that raised seed and Series A, scaled teams, and were acquired by Box and others
  • I've been the first design hire at early-stage companies, responsible for decisions that shaped products long after launch
  • I understand product tradeoffs because I've lived with the consequences: speed vs. quality, short-term wins vs. long-term foundations

I've made the mistakes. I know what breaks. I can help you avoid it.

How We Work

  • One weekly meeting (up to 60 minutes) for alignment, review, and decision-making
  • Ongoing async feedback via Figma comments, docs, or Slack—24-hour response time on weekdays
  • Focused on guidance and direction, not production design work
  • Month-to-month engagement, scoped to your current phase

No long-term contracts. If it's not working, we wrap it up cleanly.

What This Is Not

  • A full-time design hire
  • A UI production service
  • A design agency or delivery team

The goal is better decisions and clearer direction, not more artifacts.

Engagement Options

I work with a small number of founders at a time, so availability is limited.

Steady

$3,500 / month
≈ 30 hours per month

Best for:

  • Teams shipping 1-2 meaningful features per month
  • Founders who want steady guidance without daily involvement
  • Products where direction matters more than speed

Active

$6,500 / month
≈ 60 hours per month

Best for:

  • Teams shipping weekly or running frequent experiments
  • Founders who need fast feedback loops and tighter iteration
  • Products where decisions compound quickly

Hours are capped monthly and can be used flexibly across weeks. Unused hours don't roll over to the next month.

Next Step

If this sounds relevant, let's talk.

Book a free 20-minute call

I'll help you decide if this is the right level of support. If it's not, I'll tell you and suggest a better option.