Hey, I'm Rahmi and I Want to Spend More Time Making Stuff
We've had some new people join the designer's corner fam, so I wanted to give a little background!
Hey, I’m Rahmi. About a year ago I started building an operational design tool because designers (like me) waste way too much time doing stuff that has nothing to do with creating dope stuff.
Back when I was running my own studio — working with brands like Nike, Google, and Formula One — I kept hitting the same wall. Our team would spend hours making mockups, building pitch decks, deciphering feedback like “can you make it look more more fun?”, and pulling assets into five different sizes… often the ideation and strategy took a hit to accommodate this backend work on tight timelines. It was exhausting.
And I kept thinking that we were doing something wrong. There must be a better way to “do design,” something’s not working.
So I started asking around and I asked a lot of people. I talked to over a thousand designers. Most of them said the same thing: “Yeah, this sucks. It’s just a necessary evil.”
That’s when I decided to build a better way.
So… what is Ideate?
It’s your production/operational sidekick. Basically, an AI-powered workspace built to aid with the basics so you can innovate.
We’re talking:
Mockup generators that turn single assets into posters, billboards, and more in seconds no matter the dimensions
Feedback translators that turn “can you make it vibe more?” into actionable tasks
Automated brand presentation builders that allow you to build that first round presentation in hours not days
Design Director dashboards so you know what your team’s working on (and what’s blocking them)
Drag-and-drop progress updates that look good and take 30 seconds to make
File Management Systems that standardize naming conventions and make finding files easy across versions
And that’s just the start.
Where we’re at
We’ve got 4900+ designers on the waitlist including folks from places like Apple, Meta, Urban Outfitters, and IBM. We just brought on a second engineer to speed things up, and we’re testing early versions with real users.
But building something this ambitious takes time and money. We’ve won some pitch competitions and grants (which is amazing), but now we’re raising a pre-seed round to speed this process up.
We haven’t formally announced this yet, but we’re going to be launching our public beta on September 5th. If you happen to be in the Philly area, pull up! If you’re not a philly local, you will already be getting a link to stream since you’re my substack crew.
Want to help?
If you’re a designer:
Hit me up. I’ll show you what we’re building, get your thoughts, and probably end up talking shop for an hour (or 15 minutes).
If you’re an investor:
We’re raising now. I’d love to walk you through how we’re changing the future of design work.