Independent product & design studio · Brooklyn, since 2017
Start a project conversation.
A page for founders, design leaders, and engineering managers who already know what they want to build and are looking for a studio with the patience to build it well. We take on six to eight engagements a year. If the shape of your work fits the conditions below, write to us.
— Recently shipped
Before you write
A short fit check.
Four conditions, plain numbered prose. If three of the four hold for your project, the rest of this page is for you.
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01
Series A to C, with a real product on the ground.
We work with teams who have shipped a first product, raised institutional capital, and are now ready to invest in the second version. Pre-seed and bootstrapped work is rarely the right fit; neither are enterprise procurements with multi-stakeholder committees.
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02
An engagement horizon measured in months, not weeks.
Our average engagement is eleven months. We choose this over short sprints because durable products require durable partnerships — a build that lasts requires a relationship that lasts. We are not the right shop if you need a two-week design audit.
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03
Scope that fits a senior practitioner studio.
Design systems, AI-native interfaces, end-to-end product builds, and the rare brand identity that ships with the product. We do not pitch decks, we do not run paid social, and we do not staff projects with juniors. The work that lands here is the work we have spent eight years learning to do well.
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04
An in-house team we can sit alongside.
Ashke is not a body shop. We embed with your engineering and design leads, transfer knowledge continuously, and hand the work back to you. If there is no in-house team to hand it to, we are probably not the right partner for this stage of your company.
The form
Tell us about the work.
A few fields, no clever routing. Everything you write here is read by a person on the studio team — usually Maya or one of the senior leads — within two business days.
If you would rather write a longer note in your own words, skip the form and send a letter to [email protected]. Plain prose is welcome.
Or, the practical details
If you prefer to write directly.
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Email
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Telephone
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Studio
155 Water Street,
Suite 4B
Brooklyn, NY 11201 -
Response window
Two business days.
Questions we get before the first reply
The four we hear most.
- What does a typical engagement actually look like?
- Eleven months on average. We start with four to six weeks of discovery alongside your team, move into a build phase with two senior practitioners embedded, and end with a structured handover including a documented design system, recorded walkthroughs, and a 90-day post-launch support window. Sixty-four percent of our clients come back for a second engagement; most stay in some form of relationship for years.
- What happens after I submit the form?
- The note lands in a shared studio inbox. One of the senior leads reads it, and either replies with a short set of clarifying questions or — if the fit is clearly off — a polite no with a couple of other studios we respect. We do not run an automated sequence and we do not book a Calendly link on first contact.
- Do you ever take smaller or fixed-scope work?
- Rarely. We will occasionally accept a focused design system audit, a single component family, or a quarterly retainer with an existing client. We do not pitch decks, run workshops for hire, or staff short design sprints. If the work is not the kind we would put on the studio wall, we usually pass.
- What should I include in the first message?
- A paragraph on what you are building and why now, the team you have in-house, the rough shape of the work you are imagining, and a sense of the timeline. Links to the current product, the existing system, or a deck are all welcome — but the prose matters more than the artifacts. Plain words are fine.