"I need to tell someone about this decision, but I can't tell anyone at work."
This was the message our founder got at 11pm from a principal designer. They were about to make a call that could impact their entire product line. They needed to pressure-test their thinking, but politics made honest conversations impossible internally.
It's a peculiar paradox of senior design roles - the higher you climb, the more isolated the decisions become. And the stories we hear are always the same:
The design director who had to figure out how to tell his CEO "no" without ruining the relationship
The first-ever design lead establishing an entirely new function, making up the playbook as she went
The principal designer wrestling with a decision that could make or break his team's future
The Start of Coho
In 2020, our founder started manually matching senior designers in small, private groups. He'd spend days carefully curating each group, making sure the dynamics and challenges aligned. When the combinations worked, something remarkable happened - these designers finally found peers they could be completely honest with. Three years and hundreds of groups later, many of those first matches still meet.
We saw how powerful these connections were, but the manual process meant they were expensive and hard to access. So we started building technology to make these groups possible for more senior designers.
What happens in these groups?
We carefully match 4-6 senior designers who face similar challenges. They meet every two weeks in a private space where the real conversations happen:
The strategies that worked (and spectacularly failed)
The exact language used to navigate impossible situations
The decisions that kept them up at night, and how they handled them
How It Works Today
While we're still early and growing thoughtfully, we've built a way to make these groups more accessible:
Thoughtful Matching: We combine human insight with technology to carefully curate each group
Private Sessions: Meet every two weeks in a confidential space
Dedicated Group Chat: For those "I need input before tomorrow's critical meeting" moments
Group Memory: AI helps capture insights so nothing gets lost between sessions
Who's In These Groups
Our customers are senior designers (Lead, Staff, Principal, Managers, Directors) who are:
Making decisions that could impact entire product lines and teams
Navigating complex dynamics with C-level executives
Establishing new functions or roles from scratch
Looking for peers who understand these exact challenges
Join Us
If you're facing decisions you can't discuss internally, where you need peers who understand exactly what you're up against - we should talk.
The Team
We're a small team passionate about helping senior designers navigate these critical moments. Our founder spent years manually creating these groups, now working with designers, engineers, data science and AI experts to build something that is accessible to more people.