The Creative Design Partner for Founders, By Founders.
Studio Lu is an all-in-one Strategic Design Partner for high-growth founders building unified brands and products.
WTF
is a Design Partnership?
Startup-Native Strategy
+
World-Class Design
+
Fractional Design Leadership
It’s like having your own seasoned VP of Design and full design stack that just gets it from day one.
We bring together world-class design with road-tested, strategic leadership from veteran startup design leaders who know how to ship products and brands loved by millions.
Does Design Partnership make sense for you?
We’re not for everyone. Here’s our candid breakdown of how Design Partnership compares to agencies, contractors and hiring in-house (from people who have extensive experience with all of these):
Starting at Equity
We’re as picky as your are about who we partner with. We’re structured to have skin in the game so we’re incentivized by your success, not our profit.
Zero Meetings, Training or Start Time
We are all startup team leads and founders who have been where you are. If you prioritize problem-solving over process and building with people you trust, we just might be soulmates.
Senior Startup Leaders Only
We only have veteran designers, directors, and founders. We’re not just brutally fast, we know what really works (and doesn’t) for growing startups and brands that ship and continue to scale.
Agencies
$10k+/month
Agencies structure costs around personnel hours so contracts usually are based on personnel and time spent creating deliverables - valuable or not.
Lots of Onboarding, Meetings and Emails
If you like lots of back-and-forth meetings and discovery, an agency may be the best fit for you. Agencies prioritize touching base and spacing out deliverables.
Non-specialized, low velocity
Agencies are a hammer when startups need a scalpel. Agencies tend to be a kitchen sink of broad services that can’t support or drive your team to go from 0-100. (Trust us, we’ve been on both sides of this)
Contractors
$3k+/month
Contractors can be a great option when you’re on a budget, but when it’s a race to the bottom, the ceiling of talent often ends at design assembly, leaving you with the heavy lifting.
Fast Start time, Poor Communication
Depending on the contractor, start time can be quick, but communication is often the bottleneck, especially with significant time zone differences and language barriers.
Unpredictable, no strategy
Even the best design contractors aren’t strategic, because their job is to assemble designs. This means lots or rework because of misalignment. This is the #1 reason why startups come back to us.
Jr. Designers
$10k+/month
If you have the desire and resources to hire, train and grow young design talent, please do! It’s resource-heavy but can be deeply rewarding.
Lots of Hiring, Onboarding and Training
Any entry-level design hire will require significant onboarding, training and growth window. (Which we are more than happy to help with!)
Low skill, low experience
New hires always require signficant time and investment to grow. For teams that want to hit the ground running, Jr. Designers can be an expensive bet (especially if you’ve never trained a design team before).
