Renato Valdés-Olmos

01 Leadership

A design leader who ships.

Over twenty years I've built and led design, product, research, and marketing organizations, managing principal ICs through directors. I'm as comfortable directing an org as I am closing the gaps that marketing and engineering can't. At GrowthX I lead the design function, and I stay hands-on as a forward-deployed design engineer, shipping production code to our own product and to some of our largest customers.

Before that: founding designer and Head of Design at Honor, Senior Director of Product Design at Lyft, Head of Design at Grammarly, VP of Product at Pitch — and founder of Cardcloud, Human (acquired by Mapbox), and Noord.

02 Individual Contributions

Things I've built, end to end.

Products and brands I've taken zero to one, where I set the direction, drew the system, and often wrote the code.

1.1 · Alkmaar

Noord

2024

Co-founder & Investor

Noord · live homepage & Alkmaar map animation · noord.vc

Noord is an early-stage venture studio I co-founded in 2024. What initially started as an entity to continue my angel investments, became an AI-native studio with an agency spin-off. I invest in companies and operate inside them on product, brand, and go-to-market, depending on the founder's needs.

For Noord specifically I did creative direction and built the site using Studio, our in-house agency product. I tend to design and build most internal and client-facing work myself, save outsourcing the occasional logo.

VentureBrand directionGo-to-marketOperating

noord.vc →

1.2 · In progress

Studio

2025

AI-Native Front & Back Office for SMB

I designed and built Studio myself: one integrated system for a fully branded & interactive proposal, asset feedback, and invoicing experience, adapted to an agency's processes and identity.

Assistant1 change applied

Is the pricing on this proposal right?

Mostly — one flag. Site design & build is 18% below your usual rate for comparable scopes, based on 14 signed engagements.

Pricing

Raise site design & build to €26,400?

ApplyDismiss

✓Updated to €26,400 — proposal total recalculated to €50,400.

Also worth a look: two revision rounds are implied but never stated. I can add a revisions clause to CMS & handoff.

Ask about pricing, scope, or terms…Ask

Locked · Studio — priced proposal

Locked · Studio — threaded feedback

Studio · representative screens — the built-in assistant, a priced proposal awaiting sign-off, and threaded feedback pinned to the live work

Product designDesign systemsData-dense UIFront-end

Continues below

The rest is behind a quiet gate

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1.3 · San Francisco (remote)

GrowthX

2025

Head of Design, and a hands-on forward-deployed design engineer

GrowthX is the growth engine for modern marketing: forward-deployed experts paired with AI to make a brand the answer wherever buyers search.

Dashboard

Welcome back — here's what's happening with your content.

Content Quality88%+5% MoM

AI Visibility84%+8% MoM

SEO Score92%+3% MoM

Total Page Views45.2K+12% MoM

Traffic Overview

45.2k views · 28.1k visitors

Content Metrics

vs. last period

Quality88

SEO92

AI Vis84

Engage76

Relevance81

Locked · GrowthX — the design system across product & marketing

Locked · GrowthX — the branded deck system & two spin-off brands, CheckThat and Output

Design leadershipProduct & brandReact / TypeScriptAI product

growthx.ai →

1.4 · via Noord

Oak & Velvet

2024

AI-run Furniture Store

Oak & Velvet is an e-commerce business built and operated almost entirely through AI.

Oak & Velvet bouclé sofa in a styled living room

Oak & Velvet · lifestyle imagery from the automated pipeline

Locked · Oak & Velvet — the brand system & five more catalog shots

Brand & productImage pipelineArt directionAI imagery

oakvelvet.com →

1.5 · San Francisco

Human

2012

Co-founder & CEO: brand & product design

Human · iOS activity app: daily ring, city map, activity detail, clubs

Co-founded and led design for an iOS activity tracker built on one idea: move for 30 minutes a day.

Founding designiOS productBrandData visualization

03 Contributions at Scale

Leading design at scale.

Founding-stage through hypergrowth, building and leading design, product, and brand teams inside companies as they grew.

2.1 · Berlin

Pitch

2022

VP of Product

Pitch · collaborative presentations

Led product and design at the collaborative presentation platform, across core experience, AI, and growth.

Locked · Pitch — the editor, engagement analytics & the first AI features, in motion

Product leadershipOrg designMotion & brand

pitch.com →

2.2 · San Francisco (remote)

Grammarly

2020

Head of Design

Grammarly Desktop · the move from browser extension to OS-native assistant, writing suggestions inside any app

Built and led the design org for an AI writing product used daily around the world, as Grammarly expanded into the enterprise.

Locked · Grammarly — tone detection, one-tap rewrites & clarity, in motion

Org buildingAI writingDesign strategy

2.3 · San Francisco

Lyft

2018

Senior Director, Product Design

Lyft · the rider app flow

Senior design leader for the core rider experience.

Locked · Lyft — the brand in the world, Bay Wheels, Amp & the Level 5 AV program

Multimodal platformConsumer scalePre-IPO

2.4 · San Francisco

Honor

2014

Founding Designer, then Head of Design

Honor care scheduling, visit ratings, wellness

Honor · product & brand design (iOS care app)

Founding designer: I developed the brand and designed the first product in-house, then built and led the team across product design, brand, design ops, and research.

Locked · Honor — four more product & brand shots

Founding designProduct designBrand as asset

Locked · The teams behind the work & additional positions — a16z, Peak & earlier

04 How I lead

Strong opinions, loosely held.

I lead by a set of beliefs and values. They're strong opinions, loosely held: I argue for them hard, and I revise them when the evidence says to. A few of the current ones.

Judgment density, not headcount.

Small senior teams ship what used to need four times their headcount, so that's the unit I plan around. Three founders asked me this quarter whether to hire a second designer. I said no to all three.

Alignment under pressure beats complementary skills.

Skill mix is easy to assemble; alignment isn't. In diligence I don't ask about complementary skills. I ask how a team argues, and what they do when nothing's working.

Teams that teach, compound.

The pods that compound are the ones where teaching is part of the work: crits run like seminars, engineers picking up design vocabulary, juniors shipping with a senior reviewing every decision. I plan the curriculum before I plan the headcount.

Locked · Five more beliefs — and the speaking circuit

05 Capabilities

What I do.

I take the seat the work needs — leading from the exec table, running the function, or doing the work myself.

Levels I operate at

Executive teamGeneralist product exec for companies pre-seed to Series B. As comfortable in the exec team across product, brand, and go-to-market as anywhere. Experienced reporting to and sitting on boards, owning product, technology, and go-to-market metrics.

Functional leaderVP-level design and product leadership for companies seed to IPO, building and running the org. Hiring, retaining, developing, promoting and (performance) managing senior directors, managers, and principal contributors across design, product management, engineering, and marketing. Comfortable moving fast on experience & intuition, as well as partnering with HR on structural improvement plans at scale.

Principal ICIndividual contributor at the highest level, hands on the work — directly with founders at the earliest stage, or inside larger orgs on special projects and complex problems. Specialized in visual design, brand & design engineering — preferred stack: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Vercel.