Design has become a lonely job
When we create in isolation for too long we lose touch with our creative spirit. You want good feedback from designers in your corner. People who inspire new ideas in you push the quality of your own craft. Community who reminds you why you love this work and a space to share what you’ve learned along the way.
Without that we stop growing and eventually burn out.
I created a private studio for solo designers to grow their craft through critique, mentorship, and community.
You’ll join a small invite-only cohort (4-6 designer) intentionally sized to replicate a healthy, tight-knit product design team — so you can bring real work and build context.
The program runs for 6 weeks and every month includes:
Office Hours where we’ll come together as a group to work through challenges, industry trends, and go deep on craft. You’ll develop yourself as a leader and learn how your peers think about problems differently.
Design mentorship session with Nina. We can go deeper on your work or talk about connecting your day-to-day to your career goals. You set the agenda.
Community membership via slack with access to Nina and the community for feedback, inspiration, and conversation building a long-term network.
You’ll also develop a community of peers and a mentor with context that builds over time, making it easier to give high-touch feedback in your day-to-day.
Meet your mentor
Nina Mehta designed and led teams at early Stripe, Mailchimp, Twilio, and Pivotal Labs in Silicon Valley, Europe, and Asia. As the founder of Bitteschön Studio, she specializes in building design teams from the ground up and developing talent inside high-growth startups. She is focused on advising founders, coaching designers, and recently worked with Designer Fund, a premier design-first investment firm. Nina lives in Brooklyn where she is training to be a licensed psychoanalyst.
A note to founders
You want a beautiful, easy to use product that customers love. The designer on your team is inspired by your mission and enthusiastic to grow their craft. But you don’t have someone who can mentor them. Without this, designers eventually move onto a companies with bigger design teams.
This program offers your design-team-of-one a trusted community to lean on that refines visual and ux craft. They will become faster decision makers and confident presenters with an expanded peer network. They will develop skills of great leaders through their daily work. You get a lot of the benefits of a design team and manager without the extra headcount.
Ready to scale up your team? Invite your designer to apply.
Product Designers with at least 3+ years of experience in the role, at companies that builds software.
Figma is your primary design tool. Vibecoders and prototypers welcome but you must also have work in a tool folks feel proficient with for pair designing.
Curiosity and Respect is how you work with others. For us to have a space that is fun, generative, and productive, folks need to feel respected and like their work is treated with care.