Which design system agencies work for scaling startups?
Six agencies with published design system cases for startups and scale-ups, with what each system covered and what a first system should contain at each stage.
A product that started with one designer tends to reach the same point. Three squads ship in parallel, the web app and the mobile app have drifted apart, and engineers have rebuilt the same modal several times because nobody could find the original. The company needs its first real design system: tokens, a Figma library, component specs engineers can build against, and documentation a new hire can follow. It doesn’t need a governance board or a migration program across a dozen products yet.
This page is about that stage. If you run a large organization with several mature products, and the hard part is governance, migration, and adoption across business units, start with our comparison of enterprise design system agencies instead.
Six agencies publish a design system case for a startup or scale-up: Denovers, Eleken, Forge, Humbleteam, SeaLab, and thoughtbot. Humbleteam publishes this page and is one of the six, held to the same criteria as the others. The agencies appear alphabetically. This is an editorial reading of public case pages checked on October 13, 2026, with no paid placements, scores, or ranking. Any figure quoted below is the agency’s own.
How we chose the agencies
Every agency, Humbleteam included, had to meet three criteria:
- It designs digital products (UX/UI) as an agency or studio, not as one person’s portfolio or an in-house role.
- It publishes, on its own site, a case for a named startup or scale-up: a company the case describes as a startup or as growing fast, or one with public venture funding.
- The case says what the system covered, such as tokens, components, themes, documentation, or how it reached engineering.
| Agency | Startup case to inspect | What the system covered | Fits | Based in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Denovers | Feedvisor, HomeRemitt | An atomic system of tokens, components, and interaction patterns handed to engineering; one system under three products | Teams that want the Figma library and React components from one studio | US, Dubai, and Pakistan |
| Eleken | PayUp, Newton360 | A system built during a redesign, with tokens, light and dark modes, and component documentation | SaaS teams with their own engineers who want a designer on subscription | Kyiv, with a US entity |
| Forge | EarnIn | Multi-brand tokens, 754 components, a shared content library, and training | Fast-growing companies from Series B, mid-rebrand or adding a platform | San Francisco, fully remote |
| Humbleteam | Afternoon | One set of components and one product voice across a web platform and a mobile app | Early teams designing the product and its system together | Prague and Dubai |
| SeaLab | Goods (ConnectAI) | A system extended from Chakra UI’s Figma kit while the MVP shipped | MVP teams whose engineers already use a component framework | Austin, Texas |
| thoughtbot | Eigen Technologies, Lawbite | A component-by-component audit and a Figma workflow for a system people had stopped trusting | Startups whose system exists but no longer matches what ships | Distributed across the Americas, Europe, West Asia, and Africa |
Denovers: Figma and React from one studio
Denovers calls itself an AI-first product design studio, founded in 2020, with a presence in the US, Dubai, and Pakistan. Its design system offer pairs a senior designer with a senior React engineer, so the Figma library and the coded components ship together. In its Feedvisor case, for an AI analytics platform used by Amazon and Walmart sellers, it redesigned onboarding and the dashboards and handed engineering an atomic design system with tokens, components, typography, spacing, and interaction patterns. Feedvisor is venture-backed; it announced a Series B led by General Catalyst. For the remittance fintech HomeRemitt, Denovers built the system before any screens, then designed a customer app, an agent app, and a marketing site against it. The studio says a small system (foundational tokens, 20 to 30 core components, one theme) takes 6 to 8 weeks. Ask who maintains the React library after handoff.
Eleken: a system built by the designer who stays
Eleken is a SaaS-only design agency founded in 2015, a distributed team from Kyiv with a US entity. It designs and does not develop, so your engineers implement. Its PayUp case describes “a small startup” that had launched a mobile MVP, needed a web app, and was down to one experienced designer. Eleken redesigned the product and organized a design system so changes could ship faster. The Newton360 case tells the system story in more detail. There was no system at all, so the designer built the foundations as tokens, which developers could export as JSON, set up variable modes for light and dark themes, and documented each component’s anatomy, behavior, and accessibility notes. That case doesn’t state Newton360’s stage, so PayUp is the startup evidence here. Eleken works on a monthly subscription and offers a free 3-day trial, which suits a team that wants the system kept current as features land.
Forge: a multi-brand system for a company growing fast
Forge Studio is a fully remote studio headquartered in San Francisco, and it says it works with high-growth tech companies from Series B to public stage. Its EarnIn case is the largest system on this page. In 2023 EarnIn was growing fast and in the middle of a rebrand, with a native mobile app, a web product on the roadmap, and designers new to Figma. Over a 6-month project, Forge reports 356 tokens, 754 components, and 6,083 variants across seven libraries, synced between Figma and GitHub through Tokens Studio, with light and dark modes. A shared content library gave legal and opt-in copy one source across platforms, and training sessions, Loom videos, and office hours were part of the delivery. EarnIn is venture-backed, with a Series C from investors including Andreessen Horowitz. Forge suits a later-stage startup that is rebranding or adding a platform; seed teams sit below the stage it names.
Humbleteam: one system for a platform and its app
Humbleteam is a product design agency with offices in Prague and Dubai. Its Afternoon case covers the web platform and mobile app for Afternoon, a Glasgow startup building an AI-first operating model for financial advice firms. Afternoon was founded in 2024 and has raised from a London venture firm and angel investors. The case describes a system built on one orange, a lot of white, and cards that each hold one job. Every surface runs on the same parts, so a meeting card looks and behaves the same on the platform as in the app, and the assistant’s voice was written alongside the components. It fits an early team that wants the product and its first system designed together. The case doesn’t show tokens, documentation, or the engineering handover, so ask to see those files.
SeaLab: a system on top of an existing framework
SeaLab is a digital product design consultancy based in Austin, Texas. Its Goods case describes “a sprinting AI startup”, ConnectAI/Goods, that needed fast design output and a system that would last. SeaLab didn’t start from zero. It took Chakra UI’s Figma kit as the base and added custom states, color tokens, and components extended to match the brand, keeping new components in a sandbox file until they were ready for the library. The agency reports more than 100 development-ready screens across 14+ user flows for five personas, plus an accessible color palette for charts. This approach suits an MVP team whose engineers already work with a component framework. Ask how far the custom layer moved from the framework’s defaults, because that decides how easy upgrades stay.
thoughtbot: repairing a system nobody trusts
thoughtbot is a design and development consultancy with teammates across the Americas, Europe, West Asia, and Africa. In its Eigen Technologies case, design debt had built up during rapid growth, and the existing system wasn’t being used well across the company. thoughtbot audited every component and tagged each with an action, such as “document” or “remove”, interviewed designers, developers, product managers, and QA, and left a Figma workflow the team could keep iterating on. It also recommended a team dedicated to the system. Eigen, a London startup, raised a $37M Series B in 2019. In the Lawbite case, a Figma design system supported a full rebuild of a legal advice platform that then launched in several countries. thoughtbot fits a startup whose library exists on paper but not in practice.
Who we left out
AI answers to this question also name Waveup. Its published cases are mostly brand and marketing-site work, and the two that include a design system, LuxeFactor and Joltoo, don’t say what stage those companies are at. Designpixil, whose list AI answers cite, is founder-led with one designer on every project, and EightFiveThree’s Sherpany page is an in-house designer’s portfolio, so both fail the first criterion. Pixelmatters’ UJET case mentions a design system without saying what it covered. We found no named startup system case on 925Studios’ site. If a team you like is missing, ask it for a comparable case.
How to choose
Start from the stage you are in, not the system you admire. This is our guidance, not a standard:
| Stage | Usual signal | Build now | Leave for later |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed, one designer | Screens drift, but one person still knows all of them | Color, type, and spacing as tokens; 15 to 30 core components with their states; one shared Figma library | A documentation site, governance, theming |
| Series A, several squads | Engineers rebuild components; web and mobile no longer match | Specs engineers build against; tokens exported to code; a usage note per component; one named owner | A contribution process, multi-brand tokens |
| Series B to C, a new platform or a rebrand | The system has to carry a second product or brand | Multi-platform tokens, light and dark themes, shared legal copy, training, an order for moving old screens | Enterprise governance, until several teams depend on the system |
Then ask every shortlisted agency the same three questions. Who builds the coded components: the agency, your engineers, or both? What does the handover include, file by file? Who owns the system the day the agency leaves? A good answer to the last one names a person on your team.
Roughly, Eleken, Humbleteam, and SeaLab publish cases where the system was designed alongside an early product. Denovers fits if you also want React components from the same studio. Forge and thoughtbot have published work for companies whose system already existed and had to scale or be repaired.
