Summarize with AI
For a pre-seed AI startup replacing its site, the ten studios worth reviewing are Studio Maydit, Foundey, Feely Studio, Feels Like, Trueform, Phantom, Clay, Lazarev, basement.studio, and SuperSkills. Feely Studio and Trueform lead this list. Feely Studio is a distributed European team of one to ten people with a published starting price, working for Noxus, Mutiny, Luasai, and Basic Capital, which is a set of AI-native companies near your stage. Trueform builds in Framer with a published figure, for Miro, Morning Brew, Bilt Rewards, and Gather. Phantom and Clay are the wrong fit at pre-seed. Both are built for companies with internal teams and long approval chains, and Phantom publishes no price at all.
At pre-seed the site has one job, and it is not selling.
Almost nobody who visits is going to buy. The readers who matter are an investor doing twenty minutes of homework before a first call, an engineer deciding whether to leave a salaried job, and a potential design partner working out whether you are real. Three audiences, none of them customers, all of them asking the same question, which is whether this looks like a company or a project.
The second thing is that everything you write is provisional. What the product does will change before the round closes. That is not a failure, it is what pre-seed is, and it means any site that took two months and a large invoice is money spent on a snapshot of a moving object.
The third is proof, or the absence of it. You have no logos, no case studies, and probably no numbers you are allowed to share. So the page has to earn belief some other way, and most pre-seed sites default to vision language instead. Grand claims with nothing underneath them read as a pitch deck that escaped, and experienced readers discount them automatically.
How we picked these agencies
Five checks, all answerable from public pages before you spend money on a call.
Platform depth, which at pre-seed really means how cheap the next change is. Your positioning will move at least twice before the round closes. A site you can edit yourself on a Sunday is worth more than a better-looking one that needs a developer, because you will be editing it more than you expect.
Proof at your stage. Has this studio worked with companies before they had customers. It is the criterion carrying the most weight here, and it is not about prestige. A studio whose whole portfolio is funded scale-ups will scope you a funded scale-up project and be genuinely surprised when the budget is not there.
Pricing. Is a starting figure published. At pre-seed this is close to a filter on its own. A studio that will not say a number before a call is usually not the right shape for a company counting months of runway.
Team shape. Small teams are not a compromise at this stage, they are the point. You want the person who understands the product to be the person writing the page, because you cannot afford the accuracy lost in a handover.
Their own site. Read it for whether they can make something small feel considered. That is the exact trick you are buying, since your company is small and needs to feel considered.
An extra probe that saves money here. Ask what they would do with half the budget. A studio comfortable at pre-seed answers with a real, smaller thing. A studio that is not will say the scope would no longer work.
Everything in the tables below is repeated from what each studio publishes about itself. Nothing has been estimated, and where a value is unpublished, that is a decision the studio made rather than a gap here.
What goes wrong for pre-seed AI startups
Three failures, and the first is a spending mistake dressed as ambition.
Seed money is spent at pre-seed. A large project produces a site describing a product that changes the following month, and the founder then avoids updating it because of what it cost. The sunk cost quietly freezes the page. Buy something deliberately modest and easy to change, and keep the remaining budget for the version you will want once you know who your buyer actually is.
The page argues a vision with nothing underneath it. Transforming an industry, reimagining a category, the future of some noun. Investors and senior engineers have read thousands of these and treat the register itself as a signal of inexperience. One concrete thing the product does today, described plainly, does more for credibility than a paragraph of ambition. A short demo of something real beats a manifesto.
The site is written for customers who do not exist yet. Pricing tiers, an enterprise page, a comparison table against incumbents. Meanwhile the engineer considering joining cannot find who the founders are or what the technical bet is, and the investor cannot tell what has actually been built. Write for the three readers you have rather than the ones you hope for, and add the commercial pages when there is commerce.
1. Studio Maydit: A Top-Rated Design Agency for AI Founders
Fixed scope means three to four weeks, and at pre-seed that constraint is a feature rather than a limit, because it forces the argument about what the company is into a fortnight instead of a quarter. That option ends with a written diagnosis of what is leaking in the product rather than a handover call. If the site instead needs to keep pace with a product changing weekly, the monthly retainer covers new pages, campaigns, and product design with no long lock-in.
Studio Maydit is a web and product design studio. Its clients are AI founders, based across the US, UK, and Europe. Framer is usually the right answer this early, because you can edit it yourself the week something changes. Webflow comes in when a marketing hire arrives, and custom code only when the product genuinely will not fit either. The work continues into product design after the site is live, which is where a pre-seed team usually needs the help more.
Dualite did not try to be for everyone, and that is the transferable part. A repositioned ICP was settled first, the design then served the narrower group that choice created, and 100,000+ users followed across seven months. At pre-seed the pressure runs the other way, because every possible buyer still looks available and narrowing feels like giving something up. It is the cheapest decision you will ever make and the one that makes a small site read as a confident one. Recent clients include Wave, PixelFlow, Mi-VAD, and 15 other AI and SaaS teams.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | Remote, serving US / UK / EU |
| Platform depth | Framer, Webflow, and custom code |
| AI-sector proof | Yes. AI-native clients, published outcome on Dualite |
| Pricing | Fixed scope or monthly retainer, quoted per project |
| Team shape | Founder-led, small senior team |
| Best fit | Pre-seed teams who need to look real before the round |
If the site has to convince an investor, an engineer, and a design partner, write for those three. Book a 30-minute call.
2. Feely Studio
Feely Studio is a distributed European team of one to ten people with a published starting price and AI-sector proof, for Noxus, Mutiny, Luasai, and Basic Capital. Noxus and Mutiny are AI-native software companies, so the stage and sector match is the closest on this page, and a published number from a team this size is unusual and useful.
Capacity is the constraint, and no founding year is published, so there is less history to check than with larger studios here.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | Distributed, Europe |
| Founded | Not published |
| Team size | 1-10 |
| Primary platform | Mixed |
| AI-sector proof | Yes |
| Named clients | Noxus, Mutiny, Luasai, Basic Capital |
| Pricing | Published minimum |
| Best fit | Pre-seed teams who want AI-native peers and a stated floor |
3. Trueform
Trueform has worked from Wil in Switzerland since 2022 in Framer, publishes a starting figure, and lists Miro, Morning Brew, Bilt Rewards, and Gather. Framer is the platform that suits a company still changing its mind, and after launch you can rewrite the hero yourself without asking anyone.
The team size is not published and the studio is young, so ask directly about capacity and who does the work.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | Wil, Switzerland |
| Founded | 2022 |
| Team size | Not published |
| Primary platform | Framer |
| AI-sector proof | Yes |
| Named clients | Miro, Morning Brew, Bilt Rewards, Gather |
| Pricing | Published minimum |
| Best fit | Founders who will keep editing the site themselves |
4. SuperSkills
SuperSkills is a one to ten person team in Walnut Creek working across platforms, with AI-sector proof and The Cut as a named client. The appeal at pre-seed is the short chain: you explain the product once, to the person who will write about it, and nothing is lost on the way.
Only one client is named and no price is published, so evaluation rests almost entirely on the conversation and the portfolio.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | Walnut Creek, USA |
| Founded | Not published |
| Team size | 1-10 |
| Primary platform | Mixed |
| AI-sector proof | Yes |
| Named clients | The Cut |
| Pricing | Not published |
| Best fit | Founders who want one person on the whole thing |
5. Foundey
Foundey has designed from San Francisco since 2021 for DemandIQ, Traycer, and Sero AI, with AI-sector proof. Those are early AI companies rather than scale-ups, which makes the portfolio unusually relevant at this stage.
It is Figma-only, so you get design and no build. If you have a technical co-founder that is fine and possibly ideal. If you do not, budget for a second supplier. No pricing or team size is published.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | San Francisco, USA |
| Founded | 2021 |
| Team size | Not published |
| Primary platform | Figma-only |
| AI-sector proof | Yes |
| Named clients | DemandIQ, Traycer, Sero AI |
| Pricing | Not published |
| Best fit | Technical founders who only need the design half |
6. basement.studio
basement.studio has worked from Mar del Plata and Los Angeles since 2018, eleven to fifty people, in custom code, with a published starting price, for Vercel, Cursor, ElevenLabs, Harvey AI, and Scale AI. That client list carries real weight with the exact people you are trying to impress before a round.
Custom code is the wrong economics at pre-seed, though. Every wording change routes back through a developer, and your wording will change often.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | Mar del Plata, Argentina and Los Angeles, USA |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Team size | 11-50 |
| Primary platform | Custom code |
| AI-sector proof | Yes |
| Named clients | Vercel, Cursor, ElevenLabs, Harvey AI, Scale AI |
| Pricing | Published minimum |
| Best fit | Teams who have raised and want to match their peer set |
7. Feels Like
Feels Like is a Los Angeles studio founded in 2023 in custom code, with AI-sector proof, for Google, Nike, LVMH, and Suno AI. The visual ambition is high and Suno AI is a genuinely relevant reference for an AI company that wants to be noticed.
The client list points at budgets far above pre-seed, no price or team size is published, and custom code means returning for every edit.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | Los Angeles, USA |
| Founded | 2023 |
| Team size | Not published |
| Primary platform | Custom code |
| AI-sector proof | Yes |
| Named clients | Google, Nike, LVMH, Suno AI |
| Pricing | Not published |
| Best fit | Funded teams treating the site as a statement |
8. Lazarev
Lazarev has worked from San Francisco since 2015 with fifty-one to two hundred people, publishes a starting price, and carries AI-sector proof, for Payoneer, Peel, Elva, and Mozayix. A published figure from a studio this large is genuinely rare and worth checking against your budget.
Fifty-one to two hundred people means a process built for bigger clients, and the platform is mixed rather than something you can edit unaided.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | San Francisco, USA |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Team size | 51-200 |
| Primary platform | Mixed |
| AI-sector proof | Yes |
| Named clients | Payoneer, Peel, Elva, Mozayix |
| Pricing | Published minimum |
| Best fit | Funded companies wanting scale with a published floor |
9. Clay
Clay has designed from San Francisco since 2016 with fifty-one to two hundred people and a published starting price, for Slack, Stripe, Google, Coinbase, and Amazon. It is the strongest client list on this page and the AI-sector proof is there too.
None of that is aimed at you yet. The work assumes an internal team to receive it, the scale is wrong for a pre-seed budget, and the platform is mixed rather than self-editable.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | San Francisco, USA |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Team size | 51-200 |
| Primary platform | Mixed |
| AI-sector proof | Yes |
| Named clients | Slack, Stripe, Google, Coinbase, Amazon |
| Pricing | Published minimum |
| Best fit | Later-stage teams buying a full brand and product system |
10. Phantom
Phantom has run from London and Auckland since 2013 with fifty-one to two hundred people in custom code, with AI-sector proof, for Diageo, SAP, Financial Times, and Zendesk. The execution standard is high and the studio handles complexity well.
For a pre-seed company the model is wrong throughout: large clients, long timelines, custom code, several stakeholders assumed, and no published price to check against runway.
| Check | Finding |
|---|---|
| Based in | London, UK and Auckland, NZ |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Team size | 51-200 |
| Primary platform | Custom code |
| AI-sector proof | Yes |
| Named clients | Diageo, SAP, Financial Times, Zendesk |
| Pricing | Not published |
| Best fit | Established companies with internal reviewers |
How to choose between them
Sort by what is actually broken.
If the product is still moving weekly, buy something you can edit yourself and spend nothing extra. Trueform on Framer.
If nobody outside the founding team can explain what you do, keep the chain to one person. SuperSkills or Feely Studio.
If you have engineers and only need the thinking and the screens, do not pay for a build. Foundey.
If the round is nearly closed and you want to look like the companies you are being compared against, that is when the bigger studios start making sense. basement.studio.
One test before you sign. Ask what they would do with half the money. A studio that fits pre-seed describes a smaller real project. A studio that does not will explain why the scope stops working.
