Design Led
Every Sunday, you'll get a new lesson about product, design & startups to your inbox. Researched, heavily user focused & without fluff.
Which Role Will AI Kill First? PM, Designer, or Dev (And How to Be the Last One Standing)
This week, I built a working prototype with Lovable. No code needed. Nice UI, working buttons, mobile friendly - all without writing any code. When I showed it to my client, one of the devs said: “Ok, we are doomed now!” He said it jokingly, but… The hard truth? AI is coming for all of us - designers, developers, product managers. Not a question of if, but when. And which role dies first. Don’t close this email thinking “not another AI doom post.” I’m not here to scare you. I’m here to help...
I Leaked My Entire Web Design Process
I’ve built 30+ of startup websites over the last 3 years. Some took two days. Some took 3 weeks. All of them followed the exact same process. This is what helped us deliver this beautifully designed landing page for Ledger in 3 weeks. Or what helped us increase the conversion rate of Timebite Branding by 350%! Most people think a good website takes forever. That it’s this endless loop of meetings, design drafts, and “alignment.” But when your process is solid, you can move as fast as your...
How AI changed UI design forever
UI just went through the biggest shift since the invention of the touchscreen. For decades, we’ve trained users to click buttons, fill out forms, and memorize where to find the right setting. That era is fading fast. Today, people expect to speak, type, or gesture in natural language—and get exactly what they want. No menus, no endless dashboards.Just a request, and a response. This changes everything for designers. Because if interfaces are disappearing, what exactly is our job? How do we...
Why Smart Product Teams REMOVE Features (Not Add Them)
When was the last time you removed a feature? Hm? In the last 7 years, I’ve been part of a handful of product teams of early stage startups, and in 90% of cases, we talk about adding features, not removing them. Here’s the thing though: Removing a feature will have a big impact on your business growth, because features nobody uses add clutter and reduce the value of more useful features. It’s like furniture. Add too much and you can’t even walk around anymore. So let me show you the downsides...
Jobs To Be Done - A UX Framework to Build What Matters
As a startup founder, one of the worst things you can do is to pitch a new feature idea, hype the team to build it, and then realize: Our customers don’t use it. I get it. You know the industry. You’ve worked in it for several years. You might even know common pain points. BUT: Do you actually know what jobs need to get done every day? Which things your customers need to get done, software or not? Software, apps and tools are nice, but they need to help customers to complete their daily,...
Reduce Churn Without Changing Your Product (3 Fixes Most Founders Miss)
Churn sucks. When only 50% of users stay, but the other 50% drop, then you know something is wrong. And you wonder what feature is missing.How you can improve your tool.Or if your idea just sucks. Very quickly, you start focusing on the 50% that churn, instead of the good 50% that love and use the product. What makes it worse: Running ads burns money. It’s already expensive to get people to sign up, and with a 50% churn rate, your expenses double. BUT, good news: You can easily reduce your...
Lead Like a Pro: The 3 Pillars for Product Team Success (+ Bonus Slack Invite)
While being responsible for the product success of my startup, I learned how to lead the team to get results. Today I want to talk about the 3 pillars it takes to lead your product team and get results while maintaining a great team culture as a product leader. At the end, there is an invite to a leadership community with top leaders from Google, Salesforce and more, so stick around. Pillar 1: Perspective Long-term Vision: Great leaders inspire their teams to dream big. Having a visionary...
How Stripe Used Design to Build a $50 Billion Company
Stripe is the gold standard of B2B software. Some people even call it Y Combinator’s biggest success story. If you’re a founder or designer…Chances are…At some point…You’ve opened Stripe… And thought: “Damn… why doesn’t our product feel like this?” But what exactly did Stripe do… That most startups didn’t? How did they take something as boring and complex as payment infrastructure… And turn it into something that feels… Fast. Clean. And somehow… enjoyable? Let’s break it down. First: Stripe’s...
5 Brutal Truths every Founder Needs to Hear
If you’re building a startup and it’s not working, read this. Building a startup feels amazing.Until it doesn’t. Some days, you’re on fire.You get a new idea, talk to an excited user, finally fix that onboarding bug that was killing conversions. Other days, you sit in front of your laptop, stare at the analytics dashboard, and wonder if you should just go get a job. That’s the truth nobody talks about. Before I started my design studio Grauberg, I founded a startup, raised 6-figures in VC...
Where most software loses new customers (Leak revealed)
The biggest leak for new users is right between the website and the product. Here’s the harsh truth: A beautiful website with a bad product leads to drop-offs after 10 seconds. A great product with a bad website leads to no signups at all. Only when both your website and your product work together do you get real growth. Let me show you what I mean. The 3 Startup Configurations I See Every Week: 1. Good website, bad software: Lots of signups. Exciting at first. But users drop off quickly....
What is a Designer?
What is a Designer, really? A developer can make it work.A marketer can make it sell.A founder can make it happen. But only a designer can make it feel easy. Can make it look beautiful. Can make it click. There was this post I saw recently on LinkedIn, asking what a designer actually is. And it got me thinking… For me, it’s always been the same: A designer is someone with taste. That’s it. Taste. Now what does that mean? Taste is hard to define, but easy to spot. It’s the difference between...
Every Sunday, you'll get a new lesson about product, design & startups to your inbox. Researched, heavily user focused & without fluff.