Hire Kate Huezo Founding Designer & Agentic AI UX
The designer your startup needs before you know you need one.
I come in at zero to one — before you have a full team, before the design decisions are set in stone, before the wrong patterns get shipped and hardened into product debt. I think like a founder, move like a senior designer, and I've done this before. Twice. Both companies got acquired.
FULL-TIME FOUNDING DESIGNER
Your first (or second) designer. In it for real.
I'm looking for an AI-first startup where design isn't decorative — it's foundational. Where I can own product direction from day one, not just execute tickets. Where the question isn't "can you make this button bigger" but "how do we make humans actually trust this thing?"
What you get:
A designer who has shipped products from concept to acquisition — twice
Real agentic AI UX experience (built it, won hackathons with it, written about it)
Someone who moves fast without making a mess
A thinking partner for your founding team, not just someone who makes things pretty
Who this is for:
Pre-Series A AI-first startups. Design-forward founders who want a seat at the table, not a contractor in a Figma file.
FRACTIONAL FOUNDING DESIGNER
Zero to one, without the full-time commitment.
You need real design. You need it now. You're not ready to hire full-time yet — or you need someone who's done this before to get you through the critical early decisions.
That's what I do.
I come in, understand your vision fast, make the design decisions that are hardest to undo later, and leave you with something real — not a deck, not a wireframe library, a product people can actually use.
What an engagement looks like:
Deep-dive kickoff: I learn your product, your users, your constraints
Fast, opinionated design decisions (this is not a committee situation)
Shipped work — prototypes, design systems, UX flows, whatever the moment needs
Async-friendly, founder-paced
Who this is for: Early-stage founders who need a founding-level designer now but aren't ready to hire full-time. YC and pre-seed companies especially welcome.
A little context, if it helps.
I've been the first designer at two startups that were later acquired — one by Microsoft, one by WiseTech Global. I didn't walk in with a playbook. I figured it out in real time, fast, with founders who trusted me to make calls.
I specialize in agentic AI UX because I believe autonomous AI is fundamentally a trust problem — and trust is a design problem. I've built this at hackathons, written about it, and talked about it at GDC, WorkOS and AWS events.
I'm based in the SF Bay Area. I work fast. I care deeply about the work.
If that sounds like what you need, let's talk.