About · the long version

Founder who designs. Designer who ships.

A decade in product across 30+ engagements — four startups I founded end-to-end, two acquisitions I helped shape, and senior design at US companies, all from Europe on an O-1 visa. The thread is the same: get a team to a decision and turn that decision into something a customer can use this week.

Portrait of Akif Yaldır
Approach

I keep a small list of beliefs taped to the inside of my notebook. Three of them:

One. The fastest way to a good design decision is to make a bad one in front of the right people. Ship a sketch by Tuesday.

Two. If the engineers can't extend my system without asking me, the system is broken. The library belongs to the team, not to its author.

Three. Design that doesn't move a metric is a portfolio piece. The metric is the assignment.

Underneath those is a simpler claim: I read fast, sketch fast, and care more about the team's output than my own credit. Most of my best work is in products that don't have my name on them.

Resume — abridged
2025 — present

Founder · VisaEngine · Agenlead

Founder · Product, Design & Engineering · 0 to 1

Founding AI products end-to-end — strategy, design and production code. VisaEngine: a Next.js + Vercel AI SDK app with a multi-agent assessment engine and RAG over immigration rules on Supabase. Agenlead: autonomous voice agents (n8n, ElevenLabs, Twilio, GPT-4o-mini) on AWS, with iOS and web companions.

2022

PatternAI · Remote (US)

Product Designer

GenAI onboarding and adaptive UI for enterprise — chat-based querying of structured data, shipped in 2022 before ChatGPT.

2019 — 2020

Outdoorsy · Remote (US)

Product Designer

Redesigned booking and monetization flows to self-service. ~30% revenue contribution, ~20% less support dependency, and the company's first mobile design system.

2018 — 2019

Appsamurai · Remote

CX Product, Design

Interaction strategy, navigation & flow, design of interactive prototypes for AdTech customers.

2017 — 2018

Scotty · Istanbul · Acquired

Advisor, Founding Designer

Türkiye's first motorcycle ride-sharing platform. Defined the core map-based booking and real-time patterns; scaled from a founding team to ~100 people in a year.

2017 — 2018

Gobambino · Remote (US)

Co-founder

B2B2C marketplace for booking kids' activities. Strategy, product, fundraising.

2016 — 2017

Botanalytics · Remote

Advisor, Founding Designer and Engineer

Conversational analytics with live in-conversation intervention. Adopted by Coca-Cola, eBay and AstraZeneca teams.

2015 — 2016

Clearsettle · London

Product Designer

First fintech role. Reframed merchant settlement and dispute flows.

2014 — 2015

WPmanya · Istanbul · Acquired

Founder

WordPress themes marketplace; built the business strategy and led the team to an exit.

2014 — present

Independent · Remote

Product Designer & Engineer — 30+ engagements

Rakam (→ LiveRamp) · Plectica (YC) · Mindcloud · Finch · DeFiTuna · Falcon AI · Youtility · LocalGuddy (Acq) · Midtown Doornail · Mobileaction.

Design

  • Product design
  • Interaction & motion
  • Design systems
  • AI-assisted design
  • Prototyping & UI
  • User research

Product & AI

  • Strategy
  • Founding & 0→1
  • Team leadership
  • AI products & agents
  • LLM interaction design
  • Roadmapping & growth

Engineering

  • TypeScript, React, Next.js
  • Supabase, Postgres, pgvector
  • Vercel AI SDK, RAG & agents
  • Swift · iOS
  • AWS, Docker, n8n
  • Stripe, Tailwind, shadcn
Impact
30+
Engagements
4
Founded startups
2
Acquisitions shaped
O-1
Extraordinary ability visa
Outdoorsy — ~30% revenue contribution from redesigned monetization; support dependency down ~20%.
PatternAI — Shipped GenAI UX in 2022, before ChatGPT. Grew enterprise customers from ~5 to 40.
Botanalytics — Analytics adopted by Coca-Cola, eBay, and AstraZeneca teams.
Rakam — Redesign cited in LiveRamp acquisition due diligence (2021).
Leadership
Google Design Sprint

Selected as Mentor & Facilitator for the first official Google Design Sprint in Türkiye — guiding teams from major organizations (Hürriyet, e-Devlet) through prototyping and alignment.

METU Award — Top 10 / 5,000+

"New Ideas, New Businesses" for Casefuture. Led a 24-person team across paid and unpaid roles.

Mentor · Facilitator · Jury

Standing 1:1 mentor slots for early-stage founders since 2018; Sprint facilitation for stuck product teams; evaluated 20+ startups as jury at CampTech and Uni4Society.

Selective Communities

Startup Wise Guys (accelerator, solo founder), IXD Foundation, Hackathon Raptors.

Public speaking · 2015 → present 20+ talks · 9 cities · audiences of 100–500+
AI-driven transformation & the future of work
To 300–400 attendees: how AI is reshaping global employment and entrepreneurship, and what builders should do about it.
GDG Bolu2024
Effortless Design
A keynote on translating design outputs into scalable software implementations — the gap between Figma and production.
GDG İzmir2023
Sustainability & design — jury panel
Three days evaluating student concept work. Prize criteria around energy, materials, and second-order effects.
CampTech · Kütahya University2022
Founding a startup — from idea to product
Invited as mentor and speaker to guide early-stage founders on startup formation.
Sabancı University2021
Startup formation for early founders
Mentor and speaker session for students building their first ventures.
Dokuz Eylül University2020
Career in design — motivational keynote
For the IEEE student chapter. The talk I'd have wanted to hear at twenty.
IEEE · Ankara University2019
Knowing when to continue or abandon a product
An international session on strategic product decision-making in early-stage development — when to push and when to walk away.
IGDA · international2019
Designing two-sided marketplaces on mobile
Lessons from Scotty: rider and driver UX have to share a vocabulary or the system breaks.
GDG · community talk2018