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Herdora

2025

Product Design

ROLE

product designer

TIMELINE

August 2025

SKILLS

Branding

Website Design

Interaction Design

Prototyping

Herdora is a YC (S25) startup building high-performance tooling for AI teams.

I led the end-to-end production of Herdora’s first public website ahead of YC Demo Day, working closely with the founders to define the company’s brand foundation, visual language, and site structure. The focus was on translating a highly technical product into a clear, investor-ready narrative that established technical credibility and communicated business value.

I designed and coded the website, which launched ahead of Demo Day and was used directly in investor outreach, contributing to a successful seed raise shortly after.

View Final Prototype
Herdora

2025

Product Design

ROLE

product designer

TIMELINE

July - September 2025

TOOLS

Figma

React JS

Framer

Cursor

Midjourney

As a contract product designer, I worked on Herdora’s website in preparation for YC Demo Day Summer 2025 and upcoming investor meetings.

Collaborating closely with the co-founder, I helped define a visual language—typography, color palette, and iconography—that reflected the company’s values and technical rigor.

I prototyped in Figma and Framer, then implemented the final site in React using Cursor. The website successfully launched ahead of Demo Day, and the client raised a strong seed round shortly after. (The company has since pivoted to wafer.ai and rebranded, but you can view my original version below.)

View Final Prototype
View Final Prototype

OVERVIEW

Herdora needed a website that signaled technical credibility and high-quality service to investors without revealing details of an evolving product.

As an early-stage YC startup engaging enterprise clients and investors, the challenge was to communicate vision and trust while preserving flexibility for future pivots. The question became: how can visual identity and interaction design establish confidence without over-specifying the product?

OVERVIEW

Herdora needed a website that signaled technical credibility and high-quality service to investors without revealing details of an evolving product.

As an early-stage YC startup engaging enterprise clients and investors, the challenge was to communicate vision and trust while preserving flexibility for future pivots. The question became: how can visual identity and interaction design establish confidence without over-specifying the product?

Branding Discovery

MOODBOARD

I created a moodboard to align with the founders on visual direction and establish a shared foundation. We aimed for an identity that communicated technicality and confidence while remaining current within the tech startup ecosystem.

Visual System

COLOR & TYPOGRAPHY

I defined a restrained color palette derived from the initial moodboard. Cool blues and purples convey technical depth and stability. Lighter accents reflect the founders’ preference for optimism and approachability.

Typography was chosen to be serious in tone, but with character. The selected typefaces support both long-form content and dense technical messaging.

LOGO

I explored a wide range of logo directions. The focus was on structure, modularity, and abstraction rather than literal representation. Early concepts referenced systems, grids, and computational forms. I wanted to create a wide range of options for the founders to choose from.

FINAL LOGO & TYPE

The final logo that we ended up with is an abstract, symmetrical hexagon inspired by GPUs viewed sideways, suggesting unity and an engine-like structure.

Website Design Principles

FRAMING THE PROBLEM

Herdora’s website needed to serve three business goals:

establish technical credibility, attract enterprise interest, and support investor conversations without locking the company into a prematurely defined product narrative.

To do this, I translated business constraints into design constraints.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

I worked with the co-founder to derive a small set of principles directly from Herdora’s business context, product maturity, and target audience. These principles guided all decisions across content, structure, and visual design.

1 Credible, not over-specific

Signal serious low-level engineering without exposing proprietary details.

2 Performance-forward

Treat speed and efficiency as first-class design concerns.

3 Confident, not loud

Communicate ambition through clarity and restraint, not hype.

4 Modular by default

Allow sections to evolve independently as the product matures.

5 Accessible to non-experts

Make complex ideas legible to investors and decision-makers without technical background.

Website Design

HIGHLIGHT #1

Hero Section

The hero section captures attention, provides essential links, and sets a tone of performance and sophistication.

HIGHLIGHT #2

Product Sections

Automated GPU Profiling—Illustrative product cards show how Herdora identifies bottlenecks, simulates real workloads, and visualizes performance across layers.

Intelligent Performance Monitoring—Real-time, data-driven visualizations express Herdora’s engineering precision and AI-driven optimization.

HIGHLIGHT #3

Structure & Clarity

Each section of the website was designed to be modular, self-contained, and visually lightweight—helping investors and clients grasp complex concepts quickly without reading technical documents.

Final Outcome

RESULTS

We launched the Herdora website in time for investor week and YC Demo Day 2025. The site helped position Herdora as a credible, high-performance AI infrastructure company, contributing to a successful fundraising round.

Learnings

RESULTS

We launched the Herdora website in time for investor week and YC Demo Day 2025. The site helped position Herdora as a credible, high-performance AI infrastructure company, contributing to a successful fundraising round.