Why Studio - Design Studio vs In-house Designer
Studio vs In-house
The right design partner
at the right stage
In-house designers and design studios both do great work. The difference is timing. Here's how to know which one fits your stage.
Your design to-do list growing faster than your team can ship?
The real cost of hiring too early
A full-time senior product designer costs $110-180K/year in salary alone. Add benefits, equity, tools, recruiting fees (15-25% of annual salary), and 2-3 months of hiring time before they write a single pixel.
Startups have massive design demand. Landing pages, dashboards, pitch decks, marketing assets, product flows. It never stops. But one designer covers one skill set. If you need product design AND brand AND marketing pages, that's three different specialties packed into one role. Something always gets deprioritized.
A studio gives you a full team across disciplines for a fraction of that annual cost. No recruiting, no benefits overhead, no 3-month hiring gap where nothing gets designed.
What a studio brings to early stage
Speed without ramp-up
You brief on Monday, you see work by Wednesday. Onboarding is a few tool invites and a kickoff call, not a three-month ramp-up.
Multiple disciplines, one partner
Product design, brand, marketing assets, pitch decks, landing pages. One studio covers what would take 2-3 separate hires to fill.
Pattern recognition across startups
A studio sees what works across multiple startups. They bring patterns from other products into yours. Things you wouldn’t spot from inside one company.
Flexible commitment
Month-to-month. Scale up before a launch, scale down after. Your burn rate stays in your control. No long-term contracts locking you in.
Side-by-side comparison
| Area | Design Studio | In-house Designer |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | Flat monthly fee, no surprises | $10-15K+ salary + equity + benefits |
| Time to start | Days | 2-4 months (hiring + onboarding) |
| Flexibility | Scale up or down monthly | Fixed commitment |
| Risk | Try for a month, walk away anytime | A bad hire costs 6+ months and $60K+ |
| Culture fit | External partner | Part of your team |
Both options have real strengths. The question is which strengths matter most at your current stage.
When in-house is the right call
A studio isn't always the answer. Here's when hiring in-house makes more sense:
- When you have product-market fit and your design needs are consistent week to week
- When your product is complex enough that deep internal context saves more time than it costs
- When you need someone in every standup, every sprint, every decision
- When your runway supports a $120K+ annual commitment with confidence
An in-house designer who knows your product inside out is hard to replace. The goal of a studio partnership is to get you to that point faster and with less risk.
The smart sequence
Pre-seed / Seed
Studio partner
Your product is still changing shape. You need someone who ships fast and adapts weekly. Design demand is high but the type of work shifts constantly. Product screens one week, investor deck the next. A studio gives you senior output across all of it without the fixed overhead.
Seed / Series A
Studio + In-house designer
Many startups at this stage bring on a Senior Product Designer. That’s a smart move. The in-house designer owns the core product. The studio handles what doesn’t fit one person: brand projects, marketing campaigns, new product lines, redesigns. Two strong options working together. Not a compromise.
Series B and beyond
In-house team + studio if needed
You have consistent design volume. Multiple product lines. A full design org makes sense now. But even here, delegating specialized projects to a studio keeps your internal team focused on what matters most.
Let's clear a few things up
“A designer will solve our design problems”
One designer can wear every hat for a while. Product, marketing, pitch decks, brand. But stacking all of that on one person long-term leads to burnout, cut corners, or them leaving. A studio takes the pressure off before it becomes a problem.
“Studios are more expensive”
Compare total cost. Salary + equity + benefits + tools + recruiting fees + management time + the risk of a bad hire. A studio is often 40-60% less in the first 12 months. And you skip the 3-month hiring gap where nothing gets designed.
“We’ll lose control of the design”
You give access to your Figma, your repo, your Framer. The work happens in your environment, not some separate studio workspace. You see everything as it happens. Full ownership stays with you — files, components, documentation. All yours.