In 2007, Amir Khella left his job at Microsoft, and started working with early stage startups to help them craft great product experience through his unique blend of design, engineering and product management experience.
Within a year, Amir had helped three Seattle startups create high fidelity prototypes to validate ideas and raise millions of dollars from investors, and when those products were released, he started getting client requests from all over the world.
As he worked with more clients, Amir started refining and optimizing his design process to create more output in less time. Having realized that most of his time was spent in communicating design directions to clients and waiting for feedback from them, he decided to create the deep dive design (D3) process to design an entire product in 5 days instead of the typical 6 months design cycle. The process became so successful that it was later adopted by Google Ventures, and popularized as Design Sprint.
In 2010, having created lots of high fidelity prototypes for web and mobile apps, Amir noticed the inefficiencies of the tools that he had to use to design those prototypes. So instead of using Photoshop and Illustrator, like all other designers did, Amir started using Keynote to create those prototypes in a fraction of the time and cost. And when he created an online guide for other designers how he was doing it, the reaction was so overwhelming that he created a website to teach people how to use Keynote and PowerPoint to prototype apps, and to sell them high fidelity UI kits to help them do it faster.
Keynotopia was created and launched in 3 hours, with less than $50 budget, and had its first paying customer in the first 10 minutes. It has been mentioned in hundreds of blogs and tech publications, and recommended by the top design and product influencers out there.
Growing that business to 75,000+ customers allowed Amir to add valuable skills to his existing ones. In addition to his experience in engineering, design, and product management, he now has experience with business and marketing, which he integrated into his Design Sprint.
As Amir and his team continue to work with clients to help them think through every aspect of the product, the market, and the business, he continued to launch and grow new products to existing and new audiences, and using all the lessons he is learning to make his clients’ projects more successful.
Amir has an exceptional skill to extract and blend all the determining factors: functionality, mission, business model, team, etc. – to create first valuable steps and a feasible vision of your product. His personality and experience make the workflow very smooth and effective. I strongly recommend him to any Startup.
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