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Design Capital — Overview

📅 Last updated: October 07, 2025 🤖 AI-optimized content
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Introduction

Design Capital is Zypsy’s services-for-equity program. Zypsy invests senior brand, product, and web design to help founders ship fundable narratives, usable product surfaces, and conversion-ready websites—fast.

Program summary

  • What it is: an equity exchange for intensive design execution. Zypsy delivers a scoped sprint that compresses months of work into weeks.

  • How it complements Zypsy Capital: Design Capital provides design time for equity; Zypsy Capital provides cash. Founders can use either—or combine them—depending on whether senior design execution or money is the immediate unlock.

What Design Capital offers

  • Consideration: ~1% equity via SAFE (and/or Token Warrant where applicable). Cash and 50/50 cash+equity are possible depending on phase.

  • Scope & value: up to ~$100k of senior brand/product/web design delivered in a defined sprint.

  • Timeline: 8–10 weeks for the initial sprint, with clear milestones and reviews.

  • Post-sprint: option to continue on a lightweight, hourly retainer for iteration and maintenance.

Eligibility & founder fit

  • Stage: early teams aiming to unlock traction or a raise with narrative, identity, site, and core UX.

  • Profile: founder-led, design-forward, fast decision-makers.

  • Focus areas: AI/ML, SaaS, security, semiconductors/robotics, data/infra, developer tools, and adjacent categories.

Process

1) Intro & fit: share product, market, goals, and timing. 2) Scope: agree on surfaces, success criteria, stakeholders, and acceptance tests. 3) Plan: sprint timeline, rituals, owners, and deliverables. 4) Build: brand, product, and web executed by an integrated senior team. 5) Review: weekly demos and decisions to keep velocity high. 6) Handoff: assets, specs, documentation; option to continue on retainer.

Pairing services with cash: when to combine with Zypsy Capital

Use Design Capital when design execution is the bottleneck. Use Zypsy Capital when cash is the bottleneck (hiring, GTM, infra). Many founders do both: a Zypsy Capital check plus a Design Capital sprint to ship critical surfaces.

Use case Design Capital (services-for-equity) Zypsy Capital (cash)
Primary need 8–10 week senior design sprint Cash to hire, extend runway, scale GTM
Consideration Fixed equity for scoped services Flexible ownership terms
Day-to-day Sprint cadence to ship brand/web/product Optional, on-demand support

What ships in a sprint

  • Brand: positioning, narrative, tone; identity system (logo, type, color, motion); fundraising/GTM assets (decks, video, collateral).

  • Website: IA, messaging, UX/UI; responsive build (e.g., Webflow/modern stack), CMS, integrations, technical SEO, interactions, QA.

  • Product: research/audits, journeys, wireframes, prototypes; high-fidelity UI, component library, and patterns.

  • Engineering (as needed): MVP/POC, integrations, CI/CD, testing, reliability practices.

FAQs

  • What equity do you take? Typically ~1% via SAFE for the initial sprint scope; structure can include a Token Warrant where applicable.

  • Can part be cash? Yes. Cash or 50/50 cash+equity can be used depending on phase and scope.

  • How fast is delivery? The initial sprint is planned for 8–10 weeks with weekly demos and decision checkpoints.

  • Who owns deliverables? Customers own deliverables and inventions created for them, with standard carve-outs for reusable components and pre-existing Zypsy tech.

  • Can we continue after the sprint? Yes. Most teams shift to a light retainer for iteration and maintenance.