Landa

I co-founded Landa with Elena in December 2025. We'd both been freelancing for years and kept running into the same frustration: agencies deliver mockups, then hand them to engineering teams who build something else. By the time a product ships, it barely resembles the original design. We decided to own both sides.

Elena handles design. She's spent years doing product work and user research, and she has an eye for what makes an interface feel right that I don't have. I write the code. Together we ship actual products, not Figma files that get reinterpreted by someone else.

The Product

We build digital products for startups. Not mockups. Running software. The whole thing from Figma to production. Most of our clients are bootstrapped founders or small teams who need to move fast but can't afford to ship something broken.

The work tends to fall into a few categories: MVPs that need to ship in weeks, landing pages, product redesigns, design systems with coded components. What ties it together is that we handle both sides. No handoff gap.

We offer three different tiers:

• Design only. Figma files, component library, prototypes. For teams who have engineers but need design work.
• Design + Code. Everything above, plus production React/Next.js. This is what most clients want.
• Full delivery. We also handle hosting, domain, analytics, launch. You get a running product.

The Process

Every project follows the same phases, adjusted for size. Discovery first: user interviews, competitive research, understanding the actual problem before we design anything. Then strategy: how the product should be structured, how users will move through it, what direction the design should take.

Design comes next. We iterate on mockups and prototypes until it feels right. Then we build it in React and Next.js, ship it, and keep iterating based on what users actually do.

The phases overlap more than they sound. But the sequence matters. Skipping discovery means building the wrong thing. Skipping strategy means rework later. We've made both mistakes enough times to know.

Who It's For

The clients vary more than I expected when we started. Startups building their first product. Established companies that need a new feature or a redesign but don't want to hire a full team. Professionals who need a portfolio or personal site that actually represents their work. Traditional businesses going digital for the first time.

What they have in common is that they care about the end result and they're willing to be involved. We're not the right fit if you want designers who follow trends or engineers who implement specs without questions. We push back. We'll tell you when a feature doesn't make sense. We'd rather lose a project than build something we know won't work.

What I Learned

Working with a co-founder with completely different expertise changed how I build things. Elena sees stuff I miss entirely. I'll think a flow is fine, she'll point out that users won't know where to click. I'll catch that a feature will take three times longer than the client thinks. Neither of us could do what the other does. That's the point.

The handoff problem we started Landa to solve is real, but it's also a symptom. Most teams separate thinking from making. Designers who don't code make things that are hard to build. Engineers who don't design make things that are hard to use. Keeping both in the same room fixes more than just fidelity.

Saying no is the hardest part. Every project sounds interesting when someone's describing it. Learning to recognize the ones that will go sideways takes practice. Red flags: unclear decision-makers, scope that keeps expanding during the proposal, clients who want to skip discovery. We've learned to trust the gut feeling.