@lizengco
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Helping founders to launch brand & build delightful UX at https://nitter.cf/t.co/GVuGuO3pGx in Silicon Valley. Mom of 2 boys. Book a call https://nitter.cf/t.co/XtQacQkyvc
10+ years experience
Joined September 2010
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Hi everyone! I am Li, a designer with 10+ years of experience, founder of Studio Salt, mom of 2 boys.
I love designing 0-1, my heart beats for startups—their pace, their mess, their magic.
I built a fractional in-house design team, partnering with early-stage companies that need versatile, strategic design support ranging from branding to website, from marketing to product design.
If you are a founder navigating early stage design challenges—I’d love to connect! 😃
Told my kids "eat one vegetable, one surprise." They immediately started negotiating. "What about THREE vegetables, THREE surprises?" I accidentally created tiny deal makers at the dinner table lol.
One month I had 12 projects. The next month I had 5.
Some wrapped up. Some retainer clients paused or downgraded. I never know when it's coming.
And it's scary having that conversation with a client who is about to leave. Every time I see that message I feel it in my chest.
I know it's part of the business. I accept it. But now it's time to figure out how to fill that pipeline back up.
5 minutes of "can you hear me?" and 7 minutes of actual design direction.
That's the real ratio of remote client work and somehow the project still ships on time lol.
I didn't stay up past 2am for almost 20 years, but AI changed that.
Both my kids are asleep and my work is done for the day, but I'm still up trying AI tools.
I don't know about others, but this is totally one of the most stressful times in history for tech people.
AI changed us in so many ways, and this was definitely one of them lol
Some designers can make $1M/year running 30 design projects and attend zero meetings.
Meanwhile in-house designers spend half their week in meetings because that's how you build trust and context.
So which one do you prefer?
I recorded a voice note tonight while my kid asked me for natto blueberry 4 times. I was trying to talk about business anxiety but couldn't even finish a thought.
That's the real version of building a business. You're scared about next month and also explaining that it's called blackberry, not blueberry.
One toggle changed an entire checkout flow.
A client's app was showing promo codes, gift cards, and all optional fields at once. Every extra input is a decision. Every decision is a chance to pause.
We collapsed them behind a single toggle. Default path: clean. Optional fields still there, just not competing for attention.
Half my clients are rethinking their roadmaps because of AI.
I get it. I'm rethinking mine too. What worked 2 years ago in design doesn't hit the same way now. Tools, expectations, speed, all of it shifted.
But having 10 years of pattern recognition means I can read the room faster than someone just starting out. That's the one thing keeping me calm right now.
Proud to support the @LandingAI team to launch ADE model. Document processing is agentic now, the accuracy and speed is unmatched than ever before. Go Landing AI!
Today, we are announcing the second generation of Agentic Document Extraction (ADE).
It is faster, more accurate, and more affordable than ever before. ADE Gen2 delivers higher performance while optimizing cost for every document.
Pricing has been completely overhauled. Customers running mixed workloads should see 25% to 80% cost reductions.
Groundings and citations now reach the word level following a page > block> line > word hierarchy. This allows every extracted value to point to the exact location on the page it came from.
The outputs from the v2 Parse and Extract APIs are fully agent-ready and agent-friendly. Your agents get a clear hierarchy, stable IDs, and clean, standardized Markdown designed just for them.
ADE Gen2 is a step change in document intelligence not an incremental update.
Read the full announcement on the blog (link in comments).
Create an account and get started for free at ade.landing.ai
I went from freelancer accounting to full S-corp infrastructure.
What changed:
→ Set up payroll so 1 get a real paycheck
→ Started quarterly estimated tax payments (after two years of penalties)
→ Opened a solo 401k with company match and profit sharing
→ Company now covers family health insurance
→ Hired a bookkeeper to close my books monthly
Freelancing felt simpler. But I was leaving money on the table every single quarter, and I didn't even know it. Self employment tax can be very heavy too.
I noticed something about myself: when I get anxious, the first thing I drop is marketing.
I stop looking at social media entirely because seeing others succeed makes it worse. I pull back from networking.
But marketing and networking are the exact things that fill the pipeline. The moment anxiety hits is the moment I need them most.
I think a lot of founders do this. Anxiety makes you hide right when you should be showing up.
Putting my little one to bed is a full negotiation. Medicine, hungry, potty, brush teeth, no vibrating brush, milk, brush teeth again, diapers, daddy hugs, bath splash.
Then out of nowhere: I love you. I guess that makes you forget it all the chaos lol.
Exploring three.js badge dragging and spinning effects. Ai eliminates skill borders now. What an exciting and scary time we live in!
My little one woke me up at 3am and I've been going since 5.
But somehow getting 45 minutes alone at the park before work felt like the most luxurious thing I've done in weeks.
When your kids are out of school, there's no "free" time. You just rearrange the chaos and call it a schedule.
I flew to Asia to visit my parents for 3 weeks. It turned into a SPA and massage tour lol.
Back massages, head SPA, cupping, foot massages and cupping. The price is 7 times cheaper, why not! My tensed back and neck finally started feeling normal again.
Then I had to carry my toddler and two suitcases through customs, and all of it came undone in one afternoon. Talk about aging woman lol
My longest client just stopped service after 1.5 years on our highest tier.
Their PM started vibe-coding with AI. She'd propose AI solutions first, then ask designers to improve later.
AI sped everything up so much that design became the thing everyone was waiting on. We went from partner to blocker.
I'm not mad. I'm paying attention.
I audited a client's e-commerce app and the price appeared six times before checkout.
Product page, add-to-cart, cart summary, checkout header. Every tap was a reminder of how much they were spending. Showing the price on every button makes buyers more price-sensitive.
We pulled the price back to two key moments. Purchase hesitation dropped.
I just unsubscribed to @Adobe after paying monthly for 16 years! That’s $13,440.
The last couple years, I only used Acrobats PDF file combination feature several times. I thought someday I would need the other Apps. I have not downloaded or opened the tools I used for many years: Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and Premier.
Is this the end of software? Probably not, but it’s an end of era for software that cannot move fast enough to meet the users changing needs.
We want something much more lighter, faster and simpler. Sometime down the line, I think Figma may face the same challenge. As an end user, it’s best we don’t even have to open a software, not to mention to learn about it.
If a deeply trusted internal design team can get let go because of AI, a fractional team with less daily connection is even more vulnerable.
I watched it happen this month to one of my longest client relationships.
Designers need to become the judge of AI's work and the product thinker that AI can't replace.
Otherwise we're just waiting for the call.