Who we are

Zypsy is a design and investment firm for venture-backed founders, covering brand, product, websites, engineering and video under one roof. Our brand work includes strategy, positioning, messaging, visual identity, design systems and websites. Our product work includes user research, UX and UI design, prototyping, and web, mobile and back-end development. Our video work covers concept development, motion graphics, product UI video, live action and launch campaigns. Every company has a story. Our job is to show that story through brand and product, so the people you're building for understand it and resonate with it.

Zypsy works mostly with venture-backed companies from Series A to Series D that are building something new and need it understood fast. We also work with established companies launching a new product. Sectors include AI, fintech, security, robotics, healthcare, energy, developer tools and consumer apps.

Brand is the first thing customers, investors and talent feel about a company, before the pitch or the product. Zypsy treats brand as trust infrastructure, not decoration: the signal that a company is credible and built to last. For venture-backed teams, that trust compounds with every fundraise, launch and hire.

Zypsy is not the right fit if you want a team to execute a fixed design exactly as specified. Our team is senior and opinionated: we lead the work, make recommendations and push back when it matters.

Zypsy only hires senior people, so our team leads the work instead of waiting for direction. Our designers and engineers work as one team: many designers code, and engineers think in design. We also work long term, with one client partnership running four years as the company grew from two founders to ~100 people.

Zypsy starts with the problem, not the pixels. Before designing anything, we do our own research: customer interviews, competitor and market analysis, and audits of your current brand or product. We challenge assumptions, including yours, and push back when a request won't serve the goal. The result is design grounded in a clear point of view on your business.

Zypsy sometimes invests, through Zypsy Capital, our investment arm. Design work never requires taking investment. Check sizes range from $50K to $400K.

Zypsy is a design firm first. Zypsy Capital is our separate fund, investing from seed to Series A. We're not a venture studio: we don't start companies, we work with founders who've already started theirs.

Zypsy's designers and engineers have experience at companies like Meta, Google, Oura, Nike, Disney, Atlassian and Porsche. Every hire is senior, so the same experience behind those products goes into every project. Many on our team have also been founders, so we know what growth-stage companies are up against.

Zypsy's own full-time team staffs your project by default. If a project needs a specialized skill, we may bring in a vetted specialist from our network. Every project has a dedicated lead, with oversight from our design and engineering directors.

Zypsy is a global team, with leadership in New York and San Francisco. Because our team spans time zones, someone is always awake to respond, so work keeps moving around the clock.

Every Zypsy engagement is shaped around the client, whether the work is brand, product or both. Some teams need a fixed-scope sprint with a clear end, like a brand launch or a first product release. Others want an ongoing retainer, with our designers and engineers working inside their team. We recommend a structure after the first calls, and adjust it as your needs change.

Zypsy's pricing is built around each client. After the first calls, we propose either a fixed sprint fee or a monthly retainer, sized to your scope, timeline and team. If your needs change, the engagement and pricing change with them.

Zypsy needs three things from you: clear goals with any deadlines, such as a launch or fundraise; a decision-maker on your side who can approve direction; and access to what already exists, like brand assets, your current product, customer research and existing systems. You don't need a spec or requirements doc. We define the scope with you, recommend the tech stack and design system, and plan the work.

Yes. Zypsy can own design and engineering entirely or work alongside your designers and engineers, using your tools and systems. As you hire, we can also train your team on the design thinking and process we set up.

Zypsy stays on. After a first release, clients either move to a maintenance retainer for fixes, small features and scaling work, or start a new phase for major features and integrations. Our longest client relationships have run for years.

Zypsy usually sees startups rebrand at an inflection point after seed: before the next raise, when the brand no longer fits the product, when moving upmarket, after product-market fit, or when hiring senior people. The trigger is rarely the logo. It's the gap between how the company looks and where it's heading, so we rebuild positioning, identity, design system, website and fundraising materials together.

Zypsy uses AI to raise the quality of our work. Speed never comes at the expense of quality: AI takes on the repetitive parts of the process, so our team spends more of its time thinking through the problem and making the judgment calls that shape great work. We work with the latest models as they're released and build many of our own AI products.

Zypsy builds product design systems as code: tokens, components and usage rules stored alongside your codebase. Your engineers and AI coding tools build from the same source, so new screens stay consistent and on brand without a designer redrawing each one. We set it up and train your team to use it.

BrandOS turns the brand identity Zypsy creates into a source AI designs from. Instead of a static brand book, your team can generate on-brand assets, pages and content with AI tools, using the same rules we designed.

Zypsy's UX evaluation tool analyzes your product flows to find where users get stuck, such as confusing steps, unclear hierarchy and inconsistent patterns. We use it to audit your product at the start of an engagement and to track improvements over time.