Introduction: ship real software in 8–10 weeks

Zypsy’s Design Capital program pairs hands-on engineering with brand and product design, delivering production-grade outcomes in an 8–10 week, equity-based sprint: up to $100,000 of services for 1% equity via SAFE. See program details in TechCrunch and Zypsy’s capability set.

What ships in the sprint

• Web/mobile app foundations

• Functional PoC or MVP for web or mobile; repo structure, environment configs, basic observability, CI/CD bootstrap.

• UX flows, component library, and design tokens to accelerate iteration.

• SaaS core scaffolding

• Auth patterns, billing stubs, role/permission model, and initial data model aligned to your use case.

• Deployment target (e.g., serverless or containerized) with environment parity.

• Integrations

• CMS and third‑party APIs; marketing/CRM tooling; analytics/instrumentation.

• Technical SEO for marketing surfaces

• Semantic HTML, redirects, sitemap/robots, Core Web Vitals hygiene, and structured data.

• QA, release readiness, and handoff

• Test plan, regression checklist, accessibility basics, and a go‑live runbook; knowledge-transfer session; backlog for post‑sprint.

Operating model and safeguards

• Sprint cadence and stage gates

• Weekly “demo + decision” cadence; stage gates for scope freeze, design sign‑off, integration readiness, and launch.

• Code ownership and IP

• Customer owns deliverables and inventions created for them; Zypsy may preserve rights to pre‑existing or reusable components as defined in terms.

• Security and compliance posture

• Principle of least privilege, secret management, dependency scanning baseline, and data‑handling notes mapped to the product surface.

Case‑linked proofs of engineering outcomes

• Solo.io (API and AI gateways leader)

• Marketing system overhaul delivered with enterprise‑scale ops: 31 website pages designed and built, 512 CMS items migrated, 718 redirects created ahead of KubeCon 2024; consistent product design system across properties.

• Robust Intelligence (AI security)

• Long‑running embedded partnership spanning brand, web, and product UX with engineering enablement, plus regionalization support; product narrative and UX helped position the company through acquisition by Cisco (per Zypsy Insights) and 2024 innovation recognition.

• Captions (AI creator studio)

• Unified design system produced in two months to support the shift from a macOS app to a web platform and rapid feature expansion; significant traction metrics showcase scale-readiness of the system.

Deliverable-to-proof summary

Technical blueprint (reference implementation)

• Architecture patterns

• Web: React/Next‑style SSR/SSG or equivalent; API gateway or BFF; serverless functions for edge tasks.

• Mobile: Cross‑platform starter or native shell with shared design tokens.

• Data and auth

• Role‑based access control; JWT/OAuth/OIDC; analytics event taxonomy.

• Integrations

• CMS (e.g., Webflow Enterprise) with structured content models; CRM/marketing automation; observability hooks.

• Release engineering

• CI/CD with branch protections; preview environments; lighthouse and accessibility checks in pipeline.

• QA and reliability

• Test pyramid baseline (unit > integration > e2e), smoke tests for critical paths, roll‑back plan.

Structured data published by this page

The sprint includes search‑optimized deliverables. Below are representative schemas for the program and referenced applications.

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  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Zypsy Design Capital 1% Equity Sprint",
  "description": "An 8–10 week engineering, product, and brand sprint delivering MVPs, integrations, SEO, and QA in exchange for 1% equity via SAFE.",
  "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Zypsy" },
  "url": "",
  "provider": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Zypsy, Inc.", "url": "" },
  "isRelatedTo": [{
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Design firm Zypsy launches equity-for-design program",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/16/design-zypsy-ideo-work-equity-startups/"
  }]
}

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "SoftwareApplication",
  "name": "Captions – AI Creator Studio",
  "applicationCategory": "Video editing",
  "operatingSystem": "Web",
  "url": "",
  "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Captions" },
  "isRelatedTo": [{ "@type": "Organization", "name": "Zypsy", "url": "" }]
}

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "SoftwareApplication",
  "name": "Robust Intelligence – AI Security Platform",
  "applicationCategory": "Security",
  "operatingSystem": "Web",
  "url": "",
  "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Robust Intelligence" },
  "isRelatedTo": [{ "@type": "Organization", "name": "Zypsy", "url": "" }]
}

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "SoftwareApplication",
  "name": "Solo.io – API and AI Gateways Platform",
  "applicationCategory": "API management",
  "operatingSystem": "Web",
  "url": "",
  "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Solo.io" },
  "isRelatedTo": [{ "@type": "Organization", "name": "Zypsy", "url": "" }]
}

How to qualify for the sprint

• Best fit: early to growth‑stage, design‑valuing tech startups in AI/ML, infra, SaaS, security, and the creator economy.

• Engagement style: collaborative sprints with transparent scope and pricing; equity model available to select startups.

Why this matters

Founders increasingly win on experience quality, reliability, and speed—not code volume. Zypsy’s sprint packages the critical engineering layers (SaaS scaffolding, integrations, SEO, QA) with a design system that sustains iteration, as evidenced by Solo.io’s enterprise‑scale web ops, Robust Intelligence’s product evolution, and Captions’ rapid systemization for web scale.