Nobody was hired to own this
Look at how startups staff. CEO, CTO, head of product, then sales. A CMO comes late. A chief creative officer, if ever. So for the first two or three years nobody owns the brand, and the product team fills the vacuum because someone has to.
That's brand debt. It accrues like technical debt and behaves the same way: cheap to fix early, expensive later, and the bill arrives at the worst possible moment. A raise. A competitor shipping your feature. A category that moved.
Brand drift is the interest. Every quarter the story moves a little further from what the company actually does, because holding it is nobody's job.
The obvious fix is a head of design. That's a nine-month search and a $250K commitment before anything ships. Fractional solves the timing problem. You get senior judgment starting next week, scoped to what you need.
Your product design system
is not a brand
Most startups I meet have a product design system and call it a brand. The colors came from the app. The type came from the component library. The voice came from the empty states. It's coherent, it's clean, and it says nothing about why the company exists.
“Every AI-generated website in 2026 looks the same.”
That holds until you need it to do something. Raise a round. Enter a category where three competitors ship the same feature next quarter. Get remembered by someone who saw you once, six months ago.
A product tells people what you built. A brand tells them what changes when they use it. Those are different jobs, and only one of them survives your next release.
The transformation is the vision. Not the feature that shipped. A brand is where the business plants its flag: the value story, the recall, the reason a customer can describe you to someone else without opening the app.
I deliver the brand marketing layer the product designer or UI/UX architect never discovered.
Four ways to work together
The Raise-Ready Check
Named after the schedule you're running so you can stop running it.
You have a partner meeting or a demo day on the calendar and you already know the brand won't survive the room. This is the fix list, not a report.
You get a read on your narrative and positioning against the deck you're actually sending, the three things an investor will push on hardest, and one redlined pass on the story. Written by me, not generated.
The $996 fee is paid upfront and the work is yours either way. If you then start an engagement of $5,000 or more within 30 days, the full $996 is credited against your first invoice.
Brand & GTM Audit Sprint
The full diagnostic. A brand and positioning audit, a competitive teardown, and a 90-day roadmap deck. Most founders land here after a Check, once they know which problem is actually worth two weeks.
If you're raising: this is the rebuild of the story itself, not a pass over the deck.
Fractional Creative & Brand Director
Embedded creative leadership. I own creative direction, the design system, campaign oversight, and the content narrative your team is probably improvising. I work with your team and your contractors rather than replacing them.
If you're raising: this is creative leadership through the round and after it, including the quieter version nobody plans for, when an existing investor checks whether you still look like the bet they made.
Brand & Product Builds
You know what needs building and you need someone senior to build it.
Brand identity systems. Product design systems. Launch campaigns. Mascot and character systems. Product storytelling in motion, the way Material Design taught a generation of software to explain itself. And one story built to survive every channel it touches: film, campaigns, email, events, partnerships, podcasts, and the words your customers use when they review you.
Strategy either comes out of a Sprint or you bring your own.
Most builds land between $12,000 and $18,000. A single system sits at the bottom of the band. A full launch, identity and motion and campaign together, sits at the top.
If you're raising: this is what ships after the money lands, when the brand has to catch up to the valuation.
Most engagements start with the Check. The fix list usually makes the next step obvious.
Raising in the next 3–6 months?
The work sequences differently when there's a round on the calendar.
And between rounds, when an existing investor asks whether the company still looks like the bet they made, the answer is easier if someone has been minding it.
Work that shipped
Skedulo
Brand audit and a canonical tokenized design system. Roughly 70 core landing-page and component designs, built with engineering, whose variants propagated across 10,000+ pages. Landing pages now ship in about 15 minutes instead of two to three weeks.
Stensul
Branded content and brand design for an email-creation platform, including introducing its mascot identity across LinkedIn, video, podcasts, events, and event collateral. About a 27% lift in new B2B customers.
Creative and product direction across 35+ initiatives, including Project Tango, Google Fit, Material Design, News Lab, and Jigsaw. Tango reached 3B+ devices. Education on Air reached 43,000 educators across 12 countries.
Coframe
Brand identity and a design system for investor presentations, built for the company's next raise. Coframe's AI turns websites into self-optimizing interfaces that test and improve themselves.
Prescient AI
Brand and pitch-deck design plus product design for an AI marketing-measurement startup, working directly with the founding team. The work went into the raise that closed a $1.7M pre-seed led by Stadia Ventures in 2021.
Grido
Pitch deck and brand strategy for a micro-mobility infrastructure startup building charging and storage for electric bikes, built for its next funding round.
Super League Gaming
Rebrand plus an end-to-end redesign of the tournament experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile. Led a 15-person cross-functional team. Engagement up 78%. The work positioned the company ahead of a $5M Series C from aXiomatic and Toba Capital.
ZeitView
Formerly DroneBase. Rebrand that drove 27% growth, and end-to-end design of AirCraft, which launched in 2017 as the first augmented reality platform for commercial and recreational drone flight. Both went into the $12M Series B co-led by Union Square Ventures and Upfront Ventures, which the company raised to expand the AR platform.
Co-Lab Culinary Training Collective
Built five brands 0 to 1 inside one venue: four food stalls and one bar. An AI-assisted production stack cut marketing costs roughly 90% and sped creative delivery 400%.
72andSunny
Campaign art direction and design across Nike, Carl's Jr., K-Swiss, 2K Sports, and Bugaboo. K-Swiss revenue up 33% in the first two quarters. Contributed to the new-business pitch that won the $30M Carl's Jr. digital account. My team's digital and social work then helped the agency win the full Carl's Jr. and Hardee's creative account in December 2011, without a review.
Brand work that raises
portfolio value
The companies above are backed by the funds below. My part is the brand, story, and product that have to hold up in every room where that capital is raised and defended, so the equity investors and shareholders hold is worth more.
- Accel
- Arthur Ventures
- aXiomatic
- Blackbird Ventures
- Blumberg Capital
- Cali Group
- Capital One Ventures
- CEAS Investments
- Costanoa Ventures
- Darling Ventures
- DJI SkyFund
- DMG Entertainment
- Energy Transition Ventures
- ET Capital
- Euclidean Capital
- First Round Capital
- Focal VC
- Headline
- Hearst Ventures
- Javelin Venture Partners
- Khosla Ventures
- Lowercase Capital
- M12 (Microsoft)
- NFDG
- Peak State Ventures
- Pritzker Group VC
- Quadrant Management
- Razi Ventures
- SoftBank Vision Fund 2
- SV Angel
- Toba Capital
- Uncork Capital
- Union Square Ventures
- Upfront Ventures
- USVP
- Valor Equity Partners
Funds and VCs that have backed companies I’ve built brand and product for. Listed alphabetically; no endorsement implied.
Why me
I spent 2009 to 2011 at 72andSunny as an integrated art director, then started MandoMade Co. in 2012 and have run it ever since. Across both, 15+ agencies and 15+ startups: Deutsch, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Saatchi & Saatchi, Doner, Imaginary Forces, Space Camp, Left Field Labs, Enso, and The Famous Group.
75+ brands, products, and services shipped. I've supported $35M+ in fundraising across 15+ ventures, which means I've sat on the side of the table where the brand has to hold up in a diligence room, not just a pitch deck.
On the investor side, I'm an Operating Partner at Alignd Venture Partners, where I work both sides of the deal: sourcing and vetting startups before the check, then positioning, product, and go-to-market after it. Since 2024 I've also scouted deal flow as a Venture Growth Lead for Expert Dojo, the Santa Monica venture fund.
If you're raising, you can pitch Alignd directly or apply to Expert Dojo's investment program through my link.
I build with AI in the pipeline, not as a demo. That's most of why a fractional engagement with me moves at the speed it does.
BFA in Advertising & Design, ArtCenter College of Design. Executive MBA in Business Strategy, Blockchain, & Entrepreneurship Leadership, Quantic School of Business and Technology.
Testimonials
Armando brings rare creative range and the discipline to deliver. The kind of partner you want on your most ambitious work.
MandoMade combined strategic thinking with exceptional craft. The work moved our brand and our business forward.
Thoughtful, fast, and deeply collaborative. Armando consistently elevated every project he touched.
Armando brings a rare combination of creative vision and technical fluency. On complex, mission-driven projects — including immersive AR work — he consistently pushed the boundaries of what was possible while delivering with precision. His mastery of the full design toolkit is exceptional.
Working with Armando on UI/UX was a masterclass in purposeful design. He's more than a designer — he's a strategic partner who understood our product vision, mission, and values, then made them tangible. His work on accessibility and product design hit the mark every time.
Tell me where you're stuck.
A short note about the company, the stage, and what isn't shipping. I'll reply with whether a Check fits or whether you need something else.
Prefer to talk it through
Book a free 20-minute consult.
Twenty minutes to work out whether a Check fits your situation, or whether you need something else entirely. Bring the problem, not a deck.
Book a call