In-house designer, freelancer or studio · Seed to Series B
Sometimes, yes. It depends on how much design work you have, for how long, and whether you already know what the brief should be. Here is the comparison, including the case where hiring is the right call.
Book a 30-minute callThe role is “Senior Product Designer, first hire”. It has been open for months. You have interviewed some strong people, and two of them took offers elsewhere.
Meanwhile the onboarding still loses new signups, the board deck says Series A, and the problem is waiting for a person who has not been hired yet. When that person does arrive, their first question will be the one nobody has answered: what exactly should I work on first?
“Hire first, then work out the brief together” sounds like the responsible plan. It builds a team, keeps knowledge in-house and avoids paying anyone outside.
It also puts the most important decision last. The hire takes months, the ramp-up takes months more, and the metric you were hiring for keeps costing money the whole time. Sometimes that trade is still worth it. The point is to make it knowingly.
if you have twelve months of continuous senior design work and the time and budget to find the right person.
if you know exactly what needs to change and why, and you need someone to carry out a clear brief.
if you have a concentrated problem to solve in the next six months, a metric attached to it, and no time for a hiring cycle.
| First in-house designer | Freelancer | Spirixx | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first output | A 3 to 6 month hiring cycle, then 3 to 4 months of ramp-up | As soon as the brief is ready | A two-week Clarity Sprint, then one output every two weeks |
| Cost in year one | A hiring expense, senior salary, plus benefits, from day one | By the hour or the deliverable | €5,500 to €8,500 for the Sprint, then one fixed price per engagement |
| Who writes the brief | You, until they have learned the product | You | Spirixx. Worked out from your own analytics and market research |
| Disciplines covered | Usually one | Usually one | Strategy, product, brand and engineering direction |
| Seniority | Whoever you can hire | Varies | Two principals with 20+ and 10+ years |
| If it does not work | A new hiring cycle | A new freelancer | A written guarantee on the Sprint, and fixed scope after it |
| When the project ends | They stay, which is right if the work does | They leave | We leave, or move to a monthly retainer, supporting your business needs |
If your product needs senior design work every week for the next twelve months, hire. A studio for continuous work at that level is the more expensive option, and we will say so on the call.
Both can also happen in sequence. Before your first in-house designer starts, a design system gives them a foundation instead of a blank file, and a Sprint report gives them a ranked first brief. We build both for teams about to make that hire.
A freelancer carries out the brief you hand them. If the brief is right, that might be efficient.
The question is whether you know the brief is right. If you already know what needs to change and why, you may not need us. If your metrics are due to change soon, or if you are unsure, the resulting uncertainty will cost you more than any hourly rate.
We work out what the brief should be from your own data, then design and build against it, starting in two weeks.
What you pay for is the measured step before the hours: the Clarity Sprint puts a conservative ARR figure on every fix, so the brief arrives ranked by what each item is worth.
If you already have a designer, we work alongside them. An internal designer is usually fully booked with feature work, and we take the problem that needs a senior vision push and a number attached to it.
Illustrative inputs, so swap in your own:
signups a month
% reach first value today
An illustrative category figure of %
$ in annual revenue per activated user
We plan for closing 30 to 50% of the gap, not all of it, which gives a target of 23% to 25%.
3 to 5 points × 1,000 = 30 to 50 more activated users a month
30 to 50 × $900 × 12 = $324,000 to $540,000 a year
That is $27,000 to $45,000 of new ARR a month. A six-month search for the first hire, at that gap, is $162,000 to $270,000 before the new designer opens Figma.
Try your own figures in the conversion gap calculator.
How many hours of senior design work will you have every week for the next twelve months?
Do you know what the first designer you hire should work on, and what it is worth?
Can you wait 3 to 6 months for the hire, plus the ramp-up, before your next raise?
If the raise is more than a year away and the work is steady, hire. You do not need us.
Bring a rough count of the design work on your roadmap for the next twelve months. If the answer is “hire”, we will say so.
€5,500 to €8,500, with a written guarantee. The report is yours to keep, and it doubles as the first brief for an in-house hire if that is where you end up.
GENESIS for Pre-Seed and Seed teams, EVOLUTION for Series A and B, or a monthly Strategic Partner retainer with the scope agreed in writing each month.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| An open role and a problem waiting for it | Work on the problem starts in two weeks |
| The first hire’s first task is undecided | A ranked brief, priced in ARR, ready for whoever does the work |
| Staffing chosen by habit | Staffing chosen against the amount of design work on your roadmap |
The two principals on your first call do the work. There is no 3 to 6 month hiring cycle, and senior output starts in week one.
Co-founder, Head of Product Strategy and Design
MSc in computer engineering, 10+ years in systems and product design.
Co-founder, Design and Communication Principal
20+ years designing for startups and scale-ups, across product design, UX strategy and front-end.
We take three projects at a time. A mutual NDA comes before any sensitive conversation. How that works.
A freelancer executes the brief you hand them. A first in-house designer takes months to find, costs a salary before shipping anything, and covers one discipline out of the several a product needs. We work out what the brief should be from your own data, then design and build against it, starting in two weeks.
In practice it is close: senior people, a defined scope and no hiring cycle. The difference is that we are scoped against a metric, not a number of hours a week.
Often, yes. Ask whether they are a capacity constraint or a quality constraint. We help with either, alongside them rather than instead of them.
We can build the design system and the Sprint report they start from. We do not recruit.
The Clarity Sprint costs €5,500 to €6,500, or €8,500 with a technical architecture review, and the fee is credited in full if you continue within 90 days. It is a two-week commitment.
Bring a rough count of the design work on your roadmap for the next twelve months. If the answer is “hire”, we will say so.