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We help startups hire the best designers. Faster.

We'll magically book you calls with 3-5 vetted designers every week — so you can find and hire a full-time designer quickly and easily.

Trusted by startups backed by top investors

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Used by portfolio co's of top investors

Design Advising

For founders and early designers to get 1-on-1 tactical advice from design leaders
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Fractional Head of Design

Get a top 1% part-time Head of Design to help run design until you're ready to hire full-time
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Design Recruiting

An outbound sourcing engine to source, qualify, and email 150 designers per month for hiring
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Hear from our customers

I felt like we got the best candidates through working with DesignBake. [You...] effectively supercharged our recruiting [...] doing a lot of outreach to candidates who were passively looking, and that just proved to be massively successful.

Headshot of a founder - Nate

Nate Mihalovich, Founder & CEO at Revv

I fully recommend DesignBake. They basically take care of all the parts of the process that are difficult — crafting copy, finding candidates, coming up with scripts for phone interviews, design assessments [...].

Headshot of a founder - Thenuka

Thenuka Karunaratne, Founder at Flixed

Reach the best designers. On autopilot.

Here is how we helped a VC-funded startup hire a Head of Design in New York 🚀

Sourcing Criteria 🎯

Head of Design

  • Seed stage startup
  • NY-based
  • Hybrid in-person role
  • 8+ years experience
  • Ideally an under-represented candidate

40

vetted designers emailed weekly

10%

interviewed for the role

2

final offers made to candidates

Result ✨

1 Head of Design hired

Get a steady flow of vetted design candidates

1. You tell us who you're looking for, and we'll scout 100s of design portfolios weekly for you.

2. You get 3-5 vetted, qualified designers booked on your calendar to interview every week.

3. We iterate with you weekly till you find the best possible designer to hire as a full-time team member.

We specialize in design roles

With first-hand experience as startup designers, we deeply understand & empathize with who you’re looking for.

Founding Designers

Heads of Design

Chief Design Officers

Senior Product Designers

UX Engineers

UX Researchers

Reach the best design talent on the internet.

The best designers get hired before they’re even on the market — we are building a talent network of the best ones to bring them to you.

Meticulous sourcing

We carefully source + vet design portfolios for quality and experience

Data-driven approach

We report on data weekly and iterate with you to maximize candidate leads

Outbound engine

We'll manage 1000s of outbound emails monthly to help you reach top talent

High bar for talent

We are designers ourselves and can deeply understand what you're looking for

2X

Higher reply rates

37.5% reply rate compared to industry average of 18.8% (source)

Layoffs talent

We'll automatically monitor, screen and reach out to recently laid-off talent

Design Processes

We'll help you design and plan your design hiring process effectively

Comp benchmarks

We'll help you effectively design competitive comp packages to close hires

Reach passive talent

The best designers are hired before they're even available on the market.

Pricing

$2.5k/mo

fully credited towards a 20% success fee on hire

  • Calls booked with 3-5 vetted designers per week.
  • 1-on-1 support and guidance on all aspects of the design hiring process from interviewing to closing a hire.

Have questions?

Learn more about how DesignBake works and how we can help you.

Book a 10-min call

Refer a friend

Refer a friend — we'll give them a $2K discount on our services and pay you $2K when we successfully help them hire a designer.

Refer a friend

FAQs

Who is behind DesignBake?

DesignBake is run by Naitik (designer + marketer) and Joe (operator). Naitik was a founding member and designer at a YC startup and Joe was Head of Ops at On Deck (scaled from 30 → 300+ people). We've both worked at early-stage startups and have been in the exact shoes you're looking to fill.

Why do you have a subscription fee + a success fee?

We believe hiring a world-class designer requires mutual commitment from us and you. We charge a subscription fee to ensure that the founders we work with have skin in the game and are serious about matching our pace. Our subscription fees are 100% credited towards the success fee on hire, so we’re both incentive-aligned to move quickly and find the best candidate for the role.

Do you have a placement guarantee?

Yes, we have a 6-week placement guarantee. If you’re not happy with your hire in the first 6 weeks of their employment, we'll find you a new hire at no additional cost.

Still have questions? We're happy to help.

Book a 10-minute call