Aloha — I'm Aaron. I design products, build companies, and help designers grow. Fifteen years from 0→1 startups to $290B scale on BILL.
The work,
not a project grid.
Four deep dives — each answers the same questions: what changed, why it was hard, what I led, and what it proves. The range sits in More work below.
Scaling accountant insights across 700+ firms.
Reframed a reporting backlog into one insights system — framework before polish, and led the team that shipped it.
Open case study →
Standardizing UI across seven products.
Made the case for one design system, recruited the team, and started the "UI Guild" that outlived me — influence before title.
Open case study →
Making complex curriculum simple to build.
Cut complexity instead of adding features when customers were ready to walk — and retained 100% of the at-risk renewals.
Open case study →
A new product: skills, seen from every seat.
Built a skill-assessment product 0→1 for three roles, and validated it with paying customers before a line of code.
Open case study →
More work
AI co-pilot, shipped before ChatGPT.
Founding designer on a multiplayer AI co-pilot for product teams. Helped raise ~$1M pre-seed.
0→1 · AI-nativeAn LMS — designed, built & acquired.
Took an education concept the full arc from idea to a product someone wanted to own.
AcquiredShipping engine for a funded fintech.
Cross-border payments — set direction and led delivery across web, mobile, and admin.
Design leadWant a walkthrough of any of these? Get in touch →
A leadership operating system.
The same moves, project after project — craft and leadership in the same person.
Name the real problem before touching the UI.
At BILL, the highest-leverage act was reframing "ship more reports" as "build one system" — and getting the org to fund the harder, better path.
Lead as a player-coach.
Set the direction and hold the quality bar, but stay close enough to the work to prove the direction is right. I ship pixels on the same surface I'm directing.
Influence without waiting for authority.
At Kuali I made the case for one design system across seven products as an IC, recruited the team, and started a guild that outlived me — then grew into managing it.
Validate before you build.
Watching customers try to buy a prototype made evidence-before-code permanent. I de-risk the roadmap with real signal, not internal conviction.
Grow the designers around me.
Player-coach at Kuali, mentor for nearly a decade, managing direct reports at BambooHR and Sendola. I try to leave every designer better than I found them.
So I made a course on it.
What I believe about AI and design — packaged into something you can actually do, on one real project.
Human in the Loop — AI × Design Thinking
AI made it easy to build the wrong thing, faster. This teaches the skill that actually matters now: which problem to solve, which idea deserves to exist, and when the machine is confidently wrong.
8 weeks, self-paced. You take one real project from first interview to tested prototype — AI as co-pilot, your judgment in command.
- 8 in-depth lessons (~28,000 words)
- 5 reusable templates + a 40-prompt AI library
- An interactive, offline study app
- Lifetime access + free updates
The close
I'm just another kid from Lāʻie, Hawaiʻi who learned to build. I care about the people doing the work, clarity over cleverness, and shipping. Looking for a design leadership or founding-designer role where craft and leadership live in the same person. Remote from Hawaiʻi, open to relocation for the right team.