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Building a website for your startup is

easier than it's ever been. The hard

part is creating a unique brand that

really stands out. So today we'll be

joined by Kari Sarinin, co-founder and

CEO of Linear to review your websites

with an eye for what makes a memorable

brand. Welcome to another episode of

Design Review,

Ki. Thank you so much for joining us.

Well, great to be here.

So, you were the first designer at

Coinbase and you were a lead designer at

Airbnb before ultimately starting linear

as co-founder and CEO. I'm curious, what

have you learned about how to build a

strong brand when you're you're looking

at your website?

One of the first thing I would say that

it's it's something that it should be

authentic to your company. I think these

days maybe a lot of startups look at I

don't know stripe or some lower linear

or some some other company out there and

they they think like okay this is the

the way to build sites or this is the

way to build your brand none of those

companies started that way like stripe

were first website was very different

than the current website um as as well

as their product and similar with linear

like the first website was very

different than the the current website.

So I think like you you should

understand like what stage of a company

you are and like what kind of people are

you trying to find. These days there's

maybe this trend of and like because

it's easy to build websites you might

try to like build very polished or fancy

websites very early on. But what that

kind of like tells you is like it's

maybe sets the wrong expectation for the

user that if your product is just that I

don't you build it last month and like

you don't have everything figured out

yet the product might not be there yet.

it's not that polished. It might be set

this as wrong expectation that this is a

very I don't know like polished product

already and it does all the things that

it you promise it does. So I think like

there there's the danger that you go too

far like trying to look like a large

company or like a mature company too

early. So I thought like maybe it would

be interesting just look at what was the

linear website initially and what it is

today to kind of like highlight this

like difference. Love that. Let's let's

take a look. I built the first linear

website from the the the way back

machine and um in some ways like I would

say like I don't know the website is

fairly simple like it's not it doesn't

look horrible but also I think it's it's

something like we created in basically

one day we didn't want to spend weeks or

months trying to create a website where

we think like the actual the effort

should be put put into the product

itself in some ways like we the the some

of the things with the the brand or with

the even the copy is that we we wanted

to use this issue tracking term because

like if if you go to any large company

website like you go to Slack or you go

some other productivity app website it

often says something like this is the

work platform or this is the where the

work happens or something

something very vague right

and I think like that comes later when

you're trying to build this narrative

but in the very beginning what you're

trying to sell is you try to find

someone to actually use your product and

like just understand what it is so what

we did here was that We wanted to put

the issue tracking. We knew that that

wasn't the in like long-term vision

for the product or the company, but we

knew that that's like something that the

people we are looking for. It's just

early stage companies and engineers will

understand like this is issue tracking

is a is a technical project management

in a way.

It doesn't attract people that don't

know what issue tracking is. So, it

sounds like with the copy and

specifically your headline, you honed in

on like the specific phrase that your

ideal user would resonate with and be

like, "Yes, I'm looking for an issue

tracking tool." Rather than, "We're

building a work platform, blah, blah,

blah." Where people would say, "I'm not

looking for a work platform. I'm looking

for an issue tracker."

Yeah. And I think it's it's the way to

think about it. It's like you're trying

to maybe filter out people. You should

be very specific initially and maybe

like try to like you can talk to

investors in very ambitious ways. You

can say like yeah this is going to be

the work platform of the future but like

on the website you can just put like

this is a chat app

and like this is a nice chat app and

like just do that.

That's such an interesting point which

is it sounds like what you're saying is

like own being small, own being a

startup and there's a lot of advantages

that come with that rather than trying

to pretend that you're some big company.

Um, and that will set better

expectations with users and more

resonate with them. And it's also

interesting that a lot of the times

during YC, we spend a lot of time

working with companies on their two

sentence description, how they describe

themselves. And often times we say that

there's usually two different two

sentence descriptions. There's the one

for investors, which could be, you know,

the big, you know, ambitious sounding

thing, and then there's the one for your

users where you want to use specific

language that will resonate with them,

maybe jargon that investors wouldn't

understand. And so it's really

interesting you're saying focus on that

customer two sentence description, that

customer pitch, and like really put that

right front and center.

Yeah. And like I just we don't have to

go too much in in the design itself.

Like I I kind of like use this

screenshot to show like hey there is

some kind of product even though at this

time we didn't really have it ready but

if we were working on it. So there is

some kind of product. It kind of looks

nice. You can still bit see like what

the features might be but it's a little

bit faded. So it's a little bit

mysterious. So, it's like kind of like

curious because in the end what we want

people to do is put their email here and

like sign the join on the wait list.

That's so interesting because a lot of

times I think people put a screenshot on

and they just put the literal screenshot

and a lot of times it doesn't work

because people are not familiar with the

app and you're not trying to communicate

all the different features and

everything like that through this.

You're just trying to kind of build

mystery and be like this looks like a

modern tool. You should check it out

more.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think like it's it's

very like simple message in the end and

I think like we we also like went very

simple with the rest of the sites. It's

like okay it's like fast because that's

one thing we heard heard about a lot and

after superhuman we were one of the

products to add this like command menu

that like also makes things easier and

we we showed like oh it's like connects

with your some of your tooling that you

already use and okay here's the team and

like we have some like this is not some

random people but we have like built

other things in the past. Um so it's

very very simple. It's one page. There's

no other pages. Um, we're not telling,

we don't have a about page and all kinds

of we don't have a blog and like we

don't have any anything really. I think

for us it was just like let's just put

something out there to capture people

that um are potentially interested. Show

that we're pulling something new but not

ex kind of explain too much what it is.

Yeah. And so this was like a week of

work or something like that.

Yeah. Like a couple days.

Couple days. Yeah. This was how many

years ago?

This is 2019. So

Okay. So, six years ago and so now it's

evolved a bunch because the products has

evolved and what you do has evolved and

you have a lot more customers and

connections and integrations and the

product and everything. So, I'm curious

to see the latest version now. I think

this maybe like a third evolution of the

of the site and um like the second one

was the kind of famous purple website

that was like like replicated a lot uh

across the companies and I think with

this like okay yeah you can see that the

the title is different because the

product is actually doing more so so

it's not just issue tracking but we

think like there's this building part

that has multiple different kinds of

features or workflows you can use and

then there's the planning part which is

also that the planning like the road

maps approach projects that you can

write project plans and but we still

like like to keep it pretty clear like

here we say like issues projects and

product road map so it's not like again

it's the language that technical teams

would use and yeah like I think visually

it's like we went more this kind of

black and white we try to make it a

little bit mature in a way like from the

the purple from the past like we still

have like nice effects and like

we we like doing this that they they

kind of signal that we care about the

experience and that's that's kind of

like why we do this and but it's it's

more there's now more information. We

try to to explain some of the what you

can do with it and and we're still like

pretty direct that these are like yeah

you can do analytics and you can do like

uh different we have different kinds of

features. So in the end like I think

it's it's something that you should

think that the the website that the

brand always evolves with your company

and your customer base. So even now like

we have more larger companies

enterprises.

I don't want to turn into like a fully

like enterprise oracle like company like

a brand or something but I do still have

to think about it's like is this

something that fits to the the current

customers. I think one of the

interesting things to me comparing both

the original one from six years ago and

this one now is how like you've resisted

the urge to make it overwhelming people

with features and you know obviously the

product has grown a lot your customer

base has grown a lot the company has

grown a lot and I think a lot of times

the temptation is to want to throw more

and more stuff you know on the page to

communicate that to anybody who's coming

here and it seems like you've actively

fought against that to try to keep it

that same simple kind of ethos that you

had when you launched, you know, six

years ago.

The way I think about it, the landing

page, the first the homepage is kind of

like the the front page. So like you

can't explain everything like you can't

explain all the features, you can't

explain all the customer stories and

everything. That's why the there's other

pages on the on the in the website. So

we now have specific sections for

specific pages and sections for the the

areas of the product. So you can go

deeper in it. So I always think like the

homepage should be for the people who

don't really know about you. So it

should give you some kind of enough

information that you know that is this

interesting or not

but not too much so that you get

overwhelmed and not too little that you

don't understand what it is. So you have

to find that kind of balance.

Well, it's awesome to get a sense for

how you think about this in building

your own product. Should we take a look

at some uh YC submitted websites and

give some feedback?

Yeah, let's do.

Okay, so first up we have Sprites AI.

Let's take a look.

Build custom AI workflows and streamline

growth.

Very interesting. What's What's your

initial impression? These graphics

certainly stand out in their style,

right?

My initial reaction is like I'm not just

looking at this. I'm not exactly sure

who is this for and what can I do with

it. Um so it says about like build

custom AI workflows and streamline

curls. So, so in some ways like okay

like I I can understand there's some

kind of workflow but for what like is it

for designers is it for

um engineers is it for like YouTubers

there's something there's a there's a

card about YouTube there

so and streamline growth is well there's

all kinds of growth like revenue growth

and user growth there's marketing and so

I I would like probably like go a little

more specific on on the on the copy here

that there is some kind of templates I

guess for different kinds of workflows.

It's kind of like a random list of

different kinds of workflows. So it

would if it would be like meaningful to

or like useful to group them somehow

that hey there's workflows for

I don't know like YouTubers or there's

workflows for business people or some

kind of analysts or something. So

there's a little bit more like oh okay

I'm not a YouTuber but like I'm an

analyst so I I could look into this.

Yeah it seems like the who it's for is

missing here. The interesting thing for

me is I paid so much attention to the

graphics because they're so unique that

I didn't even notice that it was like

brand mood board generator, interview

questions predictor, social media ads

generator. Like I think they're trying

to tell us some of the use cases that

you could use it for, but my brain just

didn't even notice those because the

graphics just took all of my attention.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think like well

there's this movement in the background

and the movement on the cards which I

think can be nice but it might not be

the best thing to have this looping

movement in the in the landing on in the

first screen because

maybe what happened to you is like

you're kind of

kind of focused on the movement and like

what's coming up next and like I think

like the website should be kind of like

this almost like this pyramid of

like you start with this is what it is

and then it's like it's very like as

simple as possible and then you keep

going down, it's like expands and like

okay well there's this thing and that

thing and there's more more and more

things. So like oh okay like I can

that's interesting I will take a look

but the first thing should be like very

like kind of pointed or clear.

Yep. Yeah. There's like good animation

which draws your attention to um

important things that you want users to

pay attention to or notice and then

there's distracting animation that maybe

takes away attention from whatever

you're trying to focus on. There's also

this interesting element here which is

the prompt kind of like it's some kind

of prompter.

Yeah.

Which is interesting but like I just

wonder it's like kind of floating here

and you might think it's this looks like

a cookie banner in a way because that's

a good point. It just kind of floats

there.

It's not it's it's like you kind of

often often ignore that. So, I just

wonder if if you just would put this

prompter on the page here at the top and

and it it could kind of like tell

people, yeah, just like try it out and

that way like you could communicate it

better.

Yeah, it's so interesting like you're

not designing in a vacuum of your page.

You're designing in the context of what

users are used to. And if users are used

to ignoring cookie banners and things

like that that tend to pop up at the

bottom, then like maybe they're just

ignore your thing there, too. I mean

those kind of banners like the the UI

itself like this could work in the

product itself like when you're when

you're looking at the like a page or

some kind of document like it it could

be nice to have this like a floating

thing but in the website context it

feels like it's a some kind of banner

that I don't have to pay attention to.

Okay. So uh we scroll down a little bit

start building from a template. So these

look like I think the same kind of

templates that we're scrolling across

maybe slightly different. And here we've

got some more categories of types of

things. business marketing, AI

generation, image generation.

Um, okay. So, that's interesting. I

think one of the challenges when you

have like a generic workflow builder,

something that can do anything, it's

difficult to communicate the specific

things that people should use this for.

And this seems like an interesting way

to do that. Um, to give, you know, jog

people's memory of like what what do I

need? What workflows do I need to solve?

People probably have a hard time

thinking about that, but just like, oh,

do you need to create an infographic

then? Oh, yeah. That's something I would

use this for.

Maybe my biggest question here is like

what is this workflow? like uh so it's

not so there's a lot of this um there's

this promotion on the templates that you

can have different kinds of templates

but I don't think the page

um exactly describes how does it work

like it might be worthwhile try trying

to add some kind of almost like a

flowchart not really but explain that

what it like take one example and then

like kind of like blow it up a little

bit like this is what a workflow could

look like

hey there's like other workflows we

created, but like I guess maybe you can

create your own too.

Yeah.

And so I think it's kind of highlighting

the the use case.

Awesome. Well, thank you Sprites AI.

This was uh really interesting. Really

appreciate you submitting your site.

Okay. Next up, we have Giga ML and they

came to us with the question um our

website conversion rate is low. How can

we improve that? Well, I guess the first

question is like what are they trying to

convert people to? And I see two buttons

that say book a demo. So, my hunch is

that's that's the goal here. They're

trying to get funneling people to the

website. Maybe they're doing cold

outreach. Maybe they're doing other

types of marketing or something. And

then they're trying to get people to

book that demo. Um, says AI agents for

enterprise support trusted by some of

the most admired companies in the world.

And then there's a glowing blue orb

here. I don't know what's what's your

first impression. In some ways I think

it's like quite quite clean and and uh I

think it I don't know fits well for the

for the market which is an enterprise

and I would just say that like the

reason the conversion is low because

you're going after enterprises and it's

like there there's probably no way to

like increase that conversion flow like

the conversion rate really because

enterprises are not necessarily coming

to websites and clicking buttons that

much. I do think like if you do want to

have more users or more people coming

in, you probably should have a way for

them to try it out themselves and and

like kind of drop the demo. If you think

like you still want to go full

enterprise, I think this is fine. But

then you I think you just have to find

those enterprises somewhere else like

you have to do sales or some some kind

of events or some kind of like dinners

or some kind of ways to connect with the

enterprise people because they are not

often evaluating tools randomly. Maybe

sometimes they hear about it like maybe

you do some press or you maybe do

something something else. the conversion

rate doesn't really matter because the

if you sell if you do one deal that's

probably going to be like a huge deal.

It is interesting. They do have a demo

here. So, this is a little small and

it's hard to read this thing, but the

animation did draw my attention to it.

So, let's see what happens when we click

on this.

Hey there, I'm Giga ML's voice AI agent

ready to chat about anything. Do you

have something in mind?

Uh, tell me about enterprise support.

Our enterprise support is all about

making life easier for big businesses.

We offer seamless integrations with

platforms like Amazon Connect, Genesis,

and Salesforce, so everything just works

together.

Our voice AI handles massive call

volumes without breaking a sweat.

Okay, so a couple interesting things

here. First of all, when she started

talking, she basically just said, "What

do you want to talk about?"

And I was like, "I don't know." Um, so

it it might be better to start off with

a prompt that could lead people to what

um they want them to ask about, which

could be features of the product, things

like that. Um, another thing that I

noticed is when she was describing the

features of the product, she described

it as S2

type 2, which you know, most people know

it's like sock 2 type 2 is how it's

described. So, um, just making sure that

like that's actually communicating the

right thing. um if I'm an enterprise

user and you know one of the first

things I do is talk to this thing to see

how well it works and it gets things

wrong or something like then I'm nervous

that like oh maybe I don't want to use

this product. So I think steering people

towards the conversation you want them

to have with it that's most going to

upsell them would probably make them

more likely to want to book a demo and

use it in their own company.

Yeah, I would say like on the ORP it's

it's hard to see the icon in it. It's

it's kind of gray. So I I I kind of knew

something was happening, but from the

side here, I wasn't quite seeing the the

icon. So that that might be one thing if

people are not that's something like you

could track if people actually click

that and like interact with it. And I

don't know if you need to worry about it

too much, but just just see if if it it

could be like useful to like improve it.

And maybe I don't know if this element

is the best like maybe it could be maybe

there could be like more like a box or

something. It's like

maybe the box could have some prompts or

something to like show the use cases.

Set prompts. Yeah.

Like kind of well enterprise customer

support or enterprise

um like I think that the agent like the

they um the agent kind of describe like

maybe a lot of things they do and I

think again it goes to like what are

these people looking for? So if I'm an

enterprise buyer and I don't know the

CEO tells me like we need to reduce the

cost and like we want AI support like

what do I type in like what do I support

like AI

phone support or something and so kind

of like trying to think like what is the

language these people are using and then

try to put that language here so you are

like aligning with what they're looking

for.

Yeah I totally agree the headline AI

agents for enterprise support is very

generic. I think the word enterprise is

important. We clued in on that. Um, but

the sub headline there, trusted by some

of the most admired companies in the

world, is a missed opportunity to

literally describe what the product does

and more about specifically enterprise

is the big thing like specifically who

within enterprise should be the person

that cares about this

and then you know they say trusted by

the most admired companies in the world

and then they go right down and say

trusted by these great. It's like you

don't need both of these. So there's a

missed opportunity here to communicate

more.

I mean, I would say like it's I don't

know if it's like super honest to say

like these are the most admired

companies in the world. Um like the I

think it's good that there are obviously

seems like they're big companies, but I

would say like in my mind there's other

like I don't know Apple is very admired

company or something. It's like

I don't know if that statement is

exactly true.

Yeah.

But this statement is true that this

these are probably like great companies.

So I think that's fine.

Yeah. And then coming down here, voice

AI that is human. So it is voice tune.

You know, it's all about voice stuff,

but like nothing up here says voice. So

that's probably a missed opportunity to

really target who your early adopters

are going to be. My understanding with

enterprise buyers is that they they need

a lot of almost like I think you need

need a lot of materials. You need a lot

of text. You

need to check a lot of boxes.

Yeah. You need a lot of customer

stories. like there's a lot of things

they they want to see and maybe you

shouldn't put those things in like the

front page, but maybe there's a specific

category like maybe you have a specific

page about security, maybe you have se

specific page about something else. You

could still when you email them you can

link to those materials and then once

they're on the website you can kind of

like they can like travel around. Yeah.

And so I think there is some benefit of

adding things on the website but I I

wouldn't consider this is a like a

consumer startup where you you are

trying to optimize for the conversion

rate. It's very different kind of

business.

Awesome. Thank you. Giga ML

YC's next batch is now taking

applications. Got a startup in you?

Apply at y combinator.com/apply.

It's never too early and filling out the

app will level up your idea. Okay, back

to the video. Okay, next up we have

Unreal Milk. So, this one seems very

opinionated. We've got um a cow that's

chilling on a chair on my forever

vacation. Um we got some handdrawn

clouds in the sky. It's interesting when

I look at the cow, it's not immediately

obvious what it's communicating, but

when I think about it for a second, I'm

like, "Okay, so the cow doesn't have to

produce the milk all day every day." And

and so we have milk that is not real

milk, which is what the product is here.

I'm assuming

it's definitely a different kind of

category that I'm used to. I would say

like from this screen. Yeah, it's it's

hard to tell like well what is it? Like

I mean it's unreal milk. So that's the

only information so far we have. So it's

not milk but like what is it made of?

It's not real milk.

Yeah.

So maybe we need to maybe we need to

Okay. Like so it's has a side growing.

Okay. So then we move into

to some some kind of use cases. So you

can make cheese and ice cream.

So we're still not sure what it is, but

it's all all good things kind. They're

pitching us on like why it's good, why

it's better.

Uh okay.

All right. A lot of personality here.

Mama, we need you.

And the cow's crying.

And then our way.

Yeah. Our way. There's some kind of

container where the milk comes from. Um

yeah.

Uh okay. So there's some actual

pictures.

Okay. Okay, we got some scientists in a

lab.

Uh, so yeah, this kind of reads like a

nice story

and finally they did it. They they

created the whole cow milk and lap. So

it's kind of like grown

y

grown milk.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, there's a lot of personality even

the copy like down here we are moving

towards a more sustainable future. This

definitely has like a fun playful brand.

Um, seems like they don't take

themselves too seriously.

It is interesting that you talked about

um on storeshelves because I feel like

on storeshelves you would expect a

bottle that's more like these bright

colors, the bright yellows, bright

blues, that kind of stuff, but it

actually feels very black and white if

that's the actual container right there.

Um I wonder if their website, which

honestly I think is pretty memorable. Um

I think I would remember this later on.

The sides scrolling is unique and

memorable. The graphics and

illustrations are unique and memorable.

this doesn't feel like it's copying

anything that I've seen before. It feels

like they from first principles came up

with the concept of this. Um, which is

something that I think helps make it

feel more memorable. A lot of times, um,

a lot of websites are kind of cookie

cutter and it's almost a meme, you know,

in the design community around like all

websites look the same and, um, I don't

know, got to give them a lot of credit

for trying something different here to

to try to stand out and be

Yeah. And obviously it's like it's not a

product you could sign up to. So, right.

So it's it's it's something you have

constraints you have to buy. I wonder

okay well there is navigation. So I

didn't I wasn't expecting

I would not have clicked on I would not

have known that was

I was like well what do I do now? So I I

was definitely looking for what is the

next step or well actually what okay it

doesn't really do it just like scrolls

scrolls you to the thing. Yeah.

So what I would have wanted that

is that okay this is in a way it's an

announcement but well if I want to buy

this like is that possible

right? How

is it in stores? Where can I find it?

Yeah. So, I think it's it's it's like a

nice announcement. I would consider how

effective this will be. Maybe later they

will have to think like how do you

actually explain this or like a little

bit explain more,

right?

Um go deeper into some of these things,

right? Yeah. It's very interesting.

There's no call to action that we could

find. This is almost like an old school

like the early days of the internet.

People took the medium that already

existed like books and magazines and

just tried to like make that a website.

Um, and obviously websites have become

way more interactive now. Um, but this

feels like an old school like it's

almost like a magazine,

you know, display or ad or something

like that.

Yeah. Know, maybe the last thing I would

say like maybe just add some kind of

call to action. Maybe just add like

enter your email to to join like some

kind of mailing list. Um, just like

people who like if people land here like

even if that not that many like people

sign up, you could start some kind of

community. Maybe you have a lot of

people like students signing up or you

maybe have someone else signing up and

then you can start seeing this patterns

of well who who are who is signing up

and then you can ask them like why did

you sign up like why is it interesting

and then you can kind of like start the

conversation.

Yeah. Um I think like with these kind of

things they seem to have this like a

like a more like a broader social

mission or kind of like a just cause

that we should to live in a world where

we don't have to like use the animals

this way

which is I think something like you

could do more here is that

hey join this cause like we could change

the world kind of that that and then

that's the call to action

join the mailing list we can

I don't know send you some updates we

can talk about different things and so

people who are interested in that cause

join it.

The font choice feels very opinionated

too. I'm curious your thoughts on that

and and how you think about uh choosing

fonts to communicate part of the brand.

Yeah, I think like I think a font or a

tie face is very very big thing on any

website because websites in the end are

textual. So there's text on websites

like this this website doesn't have a

lot of text. I do think like their font

choice is good here given the the style

of it. It's more like handdrawn kind of

environment. In other websites, I would

just think that again like what is the

what what is the world the brand is

living in and like what kind of

signaling you want to do. Sometimes you

want to do the serifs or some of the

like more like retro or older kind of

feeling to it

or sometimes like a lot of more modern

kind of geometric type faces. It's more

like the the kind of like the standard

of the day and that's like considered

modern. Then there can be like more

futuristic type faces. And it's not like

you should just use one type face

everything because in small sizes a lot

of type faces don't work. You you

probably have to use something fairly

standard so people can read it. But for

headlines and special points you can you

can pair it with something like more

unique.

Very cool.

All right. So from the founders they

have a question. Does the website leave

a positive impression and recall for the

brand? Well yes I would say so. It felt

very organic, I would say. Um, which is

interesting because their product is not

literally organic. It's created in a

lab. Um, but it seems like what they're

trying to communicate is that this is

just as organic as real milk and not

filled with a bunch of chemicals and

it's good for you and stuff like that.

And I feel like this font choice feels

very organic, like handdrawn,

handwritten. Um, the illustrations and

the graphics feel that way. The colors

are very colorful. So, yeah, this this

feels very memorable. Like I feel like I

will remember this site a week from now.

Mhm. I think the organic thing is

interesting because technically this is

a very

like a scientific thing where where

you're creating something with with

science.

Yeah.

Which is not organic per se. Um it's

it's like you could go a direction of

Jurassic Park or something and like you

you make it like super like scientific.

But they they they did like what I think

is the right way is to to try to like

battle that feeling. I think people have

a little bit uneasiness of manufactured

foods.

Yeah.

And so you try to like battle that

feeling like hey like there's a reason

for this and like we're trying to like

communicate like we do want to like

provide you safe and I don't know good

food but or nutrients but like it's it's

there's a different method to it. The

font is very like handdrawn here but

then the brand on the bottle or the the

the logo itself is very normal. It's

like I don't know if it's Helvetica or

what, but like it's

the website is very fun and playful and

the bottle is not.

Yeah.

Missed opportunity to communicate that

there.

Thank you, Brown Foods. Appreciate you

submitting the site. Okay, next up we

have Confident AI. Let's take a look.

The LLM evaluation and observability

platform for Deep Eval, built by the

creators of Deep Eval. Engineering teams

use Confident AI to benchmark,

safeguard, and improve LLM applications

with best-in-class metrics and tracing.

Well, I would say like there's there's a

lot of like specific words here and I I

think potentially is a good thing for

for this market. Like you are selling

this to some kind of expert or like a

LLM expert and or a company and and I

think it's fine to use those like it's a

good thing to to use the words. Um I I

would say like I generally get what

they're doing. I'm not exactly maybe

like have the specifics of I I don't

know this specific category that well I

my one my first question is like well

how is this different from something

else or something like is there

something specific about this

that makes it so good

other than it's built by the creators of

deep level like well I don't know what

that is so I'm not

maybe getting that sense of like what is

this really good at or what would it who

would this exactly be for or like what

is special about it or Yeah, minor note,

and maybe this is just because I'm old,

but the purple with the underline, it

reminds me of the early days of browsers

and the internet where the default

visited link color was like that purple

with an underline.

Well, I I really thought it was a link.

I I thought it was going to link

somewhere and and I I would say that

like it it is too dark, too. It's it's

kind of it disappears into the

background. So

yeah,

I also I don't know like why why is it

in a different color and

why evaluation and not observability in

that color. Yeah.

So

yeah. Okay, let's scroll a little bit.

All right. So this feels like

linearesque where we're starting to get

into the product a little bit here. Like

a big screenshot.

Yeah, I think this looks nice like you

can see like oh there's this platform I

can I can use and I can look at like oh

it has different kinds of features and

Yep. And then open source and trusted by

top companies. Okay, cool. A lot of

GitHub stars. Okay. So, it seems like

we're talking about um the deep eval

open source product here with some of

this to build trust, which is good. If

you've got a lot of users for um the

open source version of this, then that's

a good way to build trust. Uh build your

AMO to eval. Okay. So, it seems like

it's really focused on eval. Yeah, I

think one of the tricky things is a lot

of times people will scroll and just

kind of like read the headlines and

decide if they want to dive in deeper on

the smaller text. And if I just read

that like build in a weekend, validate

in minutes, I'm not exactly sure. Make

forward progress always.

I don't exactly know what those things

mean. So I think it's helpful sometimes

when building a site to, you know, do an

exercise or just go down just read the

headlines. And does that communicate

everything that you want to communicate

to the user?

Yeah, I think some of those headlines

like yeah, the make forward progress is

a little bit vague like it's without I

think it could be like a little more

clear. I don't think you should like

make compare it to yourself to the

competition like directly like say like

hey we do better this and that like or

something like that but like I think you

should look at like what are those

companies saying how do you actually

different from those company like what

and then like try to highlight those

like benefits or special this you have

so like rather than saying like well we

do evils but like maybe you can say like

we do it differently because of these

reasons or something.

like how do you differentiate yourself?

Sometimes there's not that much

competition. Maybe there sometimes there

is a lot of competition. So you should

like make try to think like what is our

lane here?

How could we make it like special some

way or something differentiated and then

try to like weave it into the website or

into copy or into the graphics or or

something.

Yeah, that's a great point. Especially

as a small startup, you can't be the

best at all the things that all users

will care about. And so I I think to

your point earlier around trying to find

your early adopters, just trying to

figure out what's the one thing that we

want to be better than everybody else

at. And anybody who cares about that one

thing, they're going to choose us.

And it seemed like for you in the early

days with linear speed was like one of

the big things, you know, that stood out

to me on your site.

And so, you know, I could imagine you in

the early days, I'm curious if this was

explicit, just saying like, look, for

anybody that cares about speed for their

issue tracking tool, we want to make

sure they're going to choose us. We're

going to be the fastest. people care

about other things, like cool, we'll get

them later, but our early adopters are

going to be the ones that care about

speed. Is that how you thought about it?

Two things. One is like that the speed

was one of the main problems we heard

from a lot of people we talked to that

they just don't like the tools because

they're slow. And it makes sense like is

kind of like this pretty

it's like almost like an email client.

Like you use it a lot and it's like

annoying if it's if it's slow. But I do

think like you probably know it's like

who who cares most about speed like

startups do? People move fast. Yeah. So

those people like we want to align with

those people. We wanted to get the

startups. So but like what startups

don't need is complexity. So you try to

find like

the the things that your product aligns

the most with the people you want the

first and then later like yeah like

enterprises kind of care about speed but

they also care about complexity and

processes and things. Yeah. So those

things come later but like yeah you

should think what are some of the things

or the one thing that your first type of

like ideal customer and then in the

beginning especially like how do you

make the website to talk to those people

and if you don't know then you can go

talk to them. It's like why would you

pick this product or why would why why

did you pick this product and then see

if there's some kind of pattern there.

It's like well I like like it because of

these reasons and then like we'll put

those reasons on the web page so like

maybe you can find more of them.

Okay. Okay. And so we have a question

from uh the confident AI team say the

feedback we'd like is whether you know

what we do within the first 20 seconds.

We have an open- source and closed

source product. So it can get confusing.

I think we understand what they do with

it's a eval and observability platform

for deep eval. Um, but it took us a

minute to try to understand that deep

eval like it was the um the GitHub link

in the top right that says deep eval

next to it that clued me in that deep

eval is probably their open- source

thing and that this is confident AI is

their their paid product on top of it.

Um, so I think we figured that out but

it probably could have been more

explicit.

Yeah. I mean like my first reaction with

DB all just made me think of Deep Mind

or something. It's like is this like

another company they built before or or

what? So it's like it's it's like maybe

it should say that this built by the

creators of open source something deep

like so something like make it I don't

know if it's necessary but I think it

could have been helpful for me to to

understand like is it a company is it a

open source library is it

something is it a technology I don't

know what it is. Yeah. And maybe the

other interesting point here is um maybe

that's their initial wedge is they're

just looking for the people that are

already using DPV val. And if you come

here and you don't know what DPV val is,

like move along. You're not the early

adopter and the early adopter are the

people that see DP val and go oh I'm

using DPV val and I should be using this

too.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's the website is

like well DPL hosted and then

and maybe you have like well how maybe

the site then tells you well how does

the platform expand on the open source?

like maybe there's some additional

things they do. So it's like all based

on the like the first version like

obviously you can change the website

later but like this first version could

be just like well hey if you using deep

dile currently here's how we can make it

better.

Thank you confident AI website looks

very professional. All right next up we

have Dropback. Let's take a look.

Dropback is front office tech for elite

college programs and they raised 1.6

million. All right. Congrats. Uh,

Dropback is revenue sharing software for

elite collegiate teams combining back

office operations with front office

strategy. Okay, very interesting. Um,

this almost feels a little bit like, you

know, the bright colors and uh the

gradients around the buttons and um you

got like a moving grid behind like there

is a lot going on here. What's what's

your initial impression on the brand

side of this? Well, I mean like I like

that they are quite clear what they do

and so I think that's good. Um yeah,

maybe the backgrounds and the and the

graphics here like a little bit like are

they really needed and especially at or

at least at this front section. So I

think like the moving graphic is

probably not meaningful because it's

making hard to read the text.

Yeah.

Um

yeah, if that moving grid went away, I

don't think anything would be lost. In

fact, it might be gained.

Yeah. So, the Dropback team actually

submitted a question. They said, "Our

landing page feels chaotic, but there's

so much information we need to share.

Our customers are not tech-savvy.

Football coaches sometimes assume if

they don't see it, we must not support

it." Okay, so this is interesting.

They're targeting a non-technical

audience. They feel like it's chaotic,

but it seems like they feel like they

got to stuff everything into this front

thing that's the first thing that people

see, and that users will never scroll.

Has that been your experience?

I think these days people are pretty

used to to scrolling. like even on your

phone like you're constantly scrolling

up and down and and and so I don't think

it's necessarily a problem. Yeah. If if

you have that kind of feeling that you

need to share a lot, I think it's fine

to share it like down the page. You just

you don't have to do everything at the

top. I think the top should be just

again like fairly simple that this is

this is what we do. Maybe this text

could be even bigger. I I feel find it

it's a little bit hard to read and it's

like quite small and I think you're just

trying to quickly explain like what it

is. I also think like just that the

yellow color is a little bit again like

I think there's not enough contrast. I

think yellow is a hard like you should

go darker with it or not use yellow

because it's a little bit hard color to

use for button. I think this like for

example this logo logo logo logo like

documents I don't know what I don't know

what would anyone think about that.

Yeah, I can't tell what's happening

there, right? I I do think like there's

some like yeah these these could be like

moderately useful to to show there's

some kind of charts and things but um I

would just say like keep the the

homepage like the front like the top

fairly simple. You have the video here

which I think like it's quite short. Um

so I wonder if it's I mean it's it's

showing some stuff so I think that's

good. So I think like you're already

like telling people what's in it and

yeah you are like clearly like demo kind

of like demoing the product. So, I think

you don't have to use those graphics up

here. I don't know if there's anything

like you would want to add there. Like

maybe there's some maybe there's the

grid, but like don't don't make it

moving or maybe there's some like other

shapes around it. But I I would think

like these these kind of people who are

not techsavvy, they're not necessarily

looking at the most like amazing

website. something like for example at

Coinbase when I was working there. I

think that I I found that like that the

job I had with the brand or with the

with the design itself is like creating

trust and because you are dealing with

money and cryp cryptocurrency back in

2014 wasn't what it is today and like

even today there's still trust concerns.

It's like can I trust this

company to hold my money and so

sometimes you can you don't have to try

to do everything with the website. You

could have like few things that you

really want to do and in I don't know

this audience but it could be that they

just want to see something trustworthy

and you should just signal that like

this is trustworthy we have to kind of

like the features you need. Sometimes

you can make pages very feature based or

you can make them customer based or use

case based. So depending on your company

like what might I don't know what makes

sense like our page is fairly feature

based because I like that because I

think our audience is fairly like

technical

and so they they kind of know a lot of

stuff and they they often look at the

features and they like to to look at

those kind of things. But if these

people are not technical maybe they just

want to know that their problems will be

solved and or something or that like

other companies are other people like me

are using it and like I should have

their faces there saying something.

Yeah. the social proof, right?

Yeah, it's interesting as they scroll

down, they do get into the specific

features and um you know, I think this

helps to communicate. I mean, the yellow

seems to be the brand color. It keeps

coming up here.

Yeah, I think I think yellow is good,

but it's like maybe not the best

background color. Um

but they uh they did what you suggested

here, which is the black text, which I

think makes it a lot more legible, but

then these, you know, the white text,

white logos are harder to read. There's

also like a lot of automatic movement on

this page which I I do think like adds

to the chaos. So

there could be some of that but like I

would like like basically every section

is almost like moving

and so I think it's yeah like there's

again moving videos

so I would maybe like try to reduce that

if possible. Um

this page is very long too.

Yeah, sometimes it's okay but uh if if

this user base like likes it but the

other way to do this is like you just

create other pages. There's currently a

lot of space in the navigation

that you could say like for college

programs for I don't know coaches or

something like you could make very clear

like targeted pages for specific people

or specific use cases and so because

people often might look at the

navigation and then they're like oh like

I want to see what that is.

So so I think there's that kind of

opportunity too.

Yeah, seems like these just link further

down the page and take you down there.

Awesome. Well, Dropback, thank you so

much. Um, this is a really cool product.

Thank you everybody who submitted

websites. Uh, super interesting to take

a a brand look at a lot of these. Uh, we

haven't really done an episode like that

before. And of course, thank you Takari

from Linear. Uh, incredible feedback.

Really appreciate you come joining and

uh and helping out here.

Yeah, thanks. That that was fun.

And we will see you on another episode

of Design Review.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
build /bɪld/ B1	verb - to construct or create something
create /kriˈeɪt/ B1	verb - to bring something into existence
brand /brænd/ B2	noun - a type or make of product, or the identity of a company
website /ˈwɛbˌsaɪt/ B1	noun - a location on the internet containing information
startup /ˈstɑrtˌʌp/ B2	noun - a newly established business
design /dɪˈzaɪn/ B1	noun - the art or process of designing something verb - to plan and make decisions about how something should look and work
product /ˈprɑdˌʌkt/ A2	noun - an item or service that is sold
user /ˈjuːzər/ B1	noun - a person who uses a product or service
simple /ˈsɪmpəl/ A2	adjective - easy to understand or do
unique /juˈnik/ B2	adjective - being the only one of its kind
experience /ɪkˈspɪəriəns/ B2	noun - knowledge or skill from doing something
team /tim/ A2	noun - a group of people working together
feature /ˈfitʃər/ B1	noun - an important or noticeable part of something
customer /ˈkʌstəmər/ B1	noun - a person who buys goods or services
authentic /ɔːˈθɛntɪk/ B2	adjective - real and true
work /wɜrk/ A1	noun - activity involving effort to achieve something verb - to do a job or activity
look /lʊk/ A1	verb - to direct one's gaze toward something
think /θɪŋk/ A1	verb - to have an opinion or idea
change /tʃeɪndʒ/ A2	noun - the act of becoming different verb - to make or become different