Design leadership across a portfolio of Bitcoin products
Thesis is a venture studio that has been building on Bitcoin since 2014. Its portfolio spans consumer finance, DeFi infrastructure, privacy, and community tools—products like Mezo, Fold, tBTC, Taho, Acre, Lolli, and Embody.
When every product in the portfolio has a different audience, a different market, and a different maturity level, design is the thing that makes them feel like they belong together.
I joined as the studio’s first design leader in 2018. My first task was naming the company itself.
Setting the standard across the portfolio
Over seven years, I’ve touched every product in the Thesis portfolio—sometimes as an individual contributor, sometimes as creative director. I designed the original Fold identity, which endures today as the brand of the first publicly traded Bitcoin financial services company. For Mezo, I led naming, hired the brand agency, and oversaw both brand and product design from stealth through mainnet. For Embody, I shaped the strategic direction—advocating that a menstrual cycle app built on privacy should be led by women, made by women, for women.
The work has always been about range: knowing when to be hands-on and when to hire the right designer and set the brief. At peak, I led a team of five, including a design manager, across multiple concurrent products. The role required building a design culture inside an engineering-driven organization—setting standards for craft, brand coherence, and user experience across products at every stage from 0→1 to scale.
Directing the Thesis brand itself
In 2024, I directed a full brand refresh of thesis.co with Antinomy Studio. The brief was to create a visual identity that matched the ambition of the portfolio—a studio site that felt as intentional and craft-driven as the products themselves.
Directing external partners is its own kind of design leadership. It means setting a bar, holding it, and pushing creative teams to deliver beyond what’s comfortable. The Antinomy collaboration was a strong example of that—the work evolved significantly once the expectations were clear, resulting in a site that reflects the studio’s values of decentralization, freedom, privacy, and self-sovereignty through motion, typography, and restraint.
Across the portfolio, my focus has been brand architecture: ensuring that Mezo, Fold, Taho, Acre, and Embody each have distinct identities that serve their audiences, while sharing an underlying quality of craft and clarity that signals they come from the same place.
What the portfolio has built
The numbers tell part of the story. Fold has processed over $2 billion in transactions and distributed $75 million in Bitcoin rewards. Mezo reached $76 million in TVL with 18,000+ transacting users and 2,000+ Bitcoin loans. tBTC has bridged over 26,000 BTC into DeFi. Lolli has rewarded 600,000+ users with $20 million in Bitcoin. Embody has been downloaded over 100,000 times.
But the design story is about what holds it all together: a consistent commitment to making Bitcoin products that people actually want to use. Products that feel trustworthy, clear, and considered—whether someone is borrowing against their Bitcoin, earning rewards on a coffee, or tracking their cycle in private.
Design at a venture studio is never one thing. It’s naming, identity, systems, product, campaigns, hiring, and the daily work of advocating for the people who will use what you build. That’s been the job. That’s been the privilege.
