Building in SF. Working in applied AI.
Right now I’m consulting through Studio Flurry as a product design engineer, designing a conversational-AI assistant for an early-stage stealth startup. I shape the interaction model for LLM-driven, multimodal experiences and advise on design hiring and strategy.
Before that, I led design at Codegen, the agentic dev platform acquired by ClickUp, and grew a five-person design and creative team over three years.
Prior, I was the first employee at The San Francisco Standard, where I led product and design and grew a six-person team across design, engineering, and data.
Earlier in my career, I designed at Coursera and Nextdoor and was a software engineer at Palantir.
I founded Studio Flurry and worked with Brex, Persona, UCSF, Grail, and others - usually on zero to one launches. I advise early-stage startups and offer fractional design leadership.
Reach me at hello@joelaguero.com or find me on LinkedIn.
Studio Flurry
Brex
Named the company, then designed and built its first product alongside the founding team.
Persona
A UI reskin, brand refresh, and core product surfaces on a shared design system.
Grail
UX and product design for a mobile experience to receive and review sensitive medical results.
UCSF
Brand, identity, and website for the Addiction Care Team, with ongoing web support.
Pasture Biosciences
Brand, identity, and website for an early-stage biotech.
Side projects
Musings
AllThe gap is closing
Small teams, big orgs, and why design keeps getting more fun.
A fleet of agents
A fleet of always-on agents across my Macs, run from my phone - and the boundary that actually matters now.
Building with AI, for real
Honest notes from a year of actually building with agents, not just talking about them.