Hold Fast Studio is a one-person product and design practice, taking early-stage products from zero to shipped. Strategy to interface to working prototype, down to the words on the screen. Head of product and head of design at once, working in code. One person, one motion.
/ Lately
Embedded with Darren Aronofsky's film studio, Primordial Soup, on the future of AI filmmaking, which is roughly everything I'm allowed to say.
Designed Sai for Simular, agents running real work on their own computers, from first sketch to shipped.
Founding design for Superpilot, an AI marketing platform generating on-brand pages for enterprise commerce.
Designed Onboard AI, the system of record hospitals use to govern the AI they deploy. Zero to one.
New camera in the rotation, the Hasselblad X2D II. Hardware meets software, one of my favorite products ever. Second only to my Leica M11.
/ Work
A camera UI in 72×32 monochrome pixels. A phone camera app from zero to $1M ARR. Conversational AI at Microsoft Research a decade before anyone was selling conversations. An agent that runs a real computer while you do something else. The bleeding edge of AI filmmaking. I've shipped for three trillion-dollar companies and for teams that could fit in my van.
GoPro Hero 11 Black Mini
/ Working Together
Most early teams stitch this together from three people. One decides what to build, one designs it, one prototypes it. These days sometimes no one even writes it down. The seams are where months disappear. I collapse the loop. Strategy becomes design becomes a working prototype in days, tested with real users. Craft is assumed. So is building with AI agents daily. I've held the titles separately, head of product, head of design, principal designer, and the work goes best when I don't have to pick one.
The founding product and design work.
A three-month founding retainer
Product definition, core flows, and the system behind them
Design files or working repo
Month three ends with a decision, renew or hand off
Best for: A product that exists as a deck, a repo, or a hunch. Barely a category yet, nothing designed.
A standing seat without the hire.
Monthly, ongoing
A standing seat, weekly cadence
Your tools, your repo
Eyes on everything that ships
Best for: A team shipping every week with no senior product or design owner in the room. Deep enough to own outcomes.
Retainers from $25K a month. Smaller questions fit a sprint or a light advisory lane. Equity and board seats considered for the right early-stage fit. The right project has bent these terms before. If yours is one, say so.
"Natural product acumen."
"We hired Kevin to help with product incubation and future roadmap articulation. He delivered consistently with great quality and with a great attitude. I'd recommend Kevin without hesitation for his natural product acumen and collaborative approach."
Wearables Design Lead, Google "End-to-end thinking."
"Kevin brought maturity, perspective, and passion to evolving our software and hardware products... mapping the user journey from first sight to first workout."
VP of Product, Katalyst Fitness "Hard-earned experience and real taste."
"Kevin is a great design partner for startups at all stages. He brings both hard-earned experience and real taste. Recommended!"
Founder and CEO, Superpilot "Pushes the limits of product development."
"With a discerning eye for detail... Kevin consistently pushes the limits of product development, while simultaneously driving the process forward... his contributions to GoPro and the field of UX are elevated having worked with him."
Senior Principal Designer, Cameras & Hardware, GoPro "Our launch would not have been possible."
"Lead product designer collaborating with Research, Engineering, and Product under tight deadlines... tremendous impact as the design lead and strategist."
Director of UX, Material Fonts & Icons, Google "The first person I'd call."
"If I were starting a company and needed a kick-ass designer, Kevin would be the first person I'd call. I was especially impressed with how creative and thorough Kevin is... One of the best designers I've worked with at Google."
Director of Product Management, Google 