YC Head of Design Eve Bouffard doesn’t use her keyboard to design anymore. Instead she builds entire new products and websites simply by talking to her computer using voice prompts. In this episode of Design Review, YC’s Aaron Epstein sat down with Eve to discuss how she’s pushing the boundaries of AI-native design through three recent projects: Paxel, SOTA Zine, and Startup School 2026. They cover why a detailed soul.md file is the difference between generic AI output and designs that are genuinely original, the emerging pattern of building both a human and machine version of every website, and why custom shaders have become her favorite new design tool.
Chapters:
00:00 — AI Design Toolkit: Conductor, Paper Design, & Voice
01:27 — Project 1: Paxel — Spotify Wrapped for Coding Sessions
04:13 — Building the Paxel Landing Page
05:23 — Custom Shader Fine-Tuning Tools
07:13 — Designing for Humans vs. Machines
08:31 — "Send to an Agent" Feature Request Forms
10:18 — The Future of Locally Personalized Software
12:53 — Project 2: SOTA Zine — Celebrating San Francisco
14:34 — The Soul.md File as Source of Truth
16:57 — One-Shot = 16 Website Variations
20:06 — When the Agent Surprises You
21:50 — How to Break Out of Generic AI Design
23:20 — Building an Interactive SF Map
25:17 — Project 3: Startup School 2026 Branding
26:32 — Automated Speaker Card Generation
27:50 — Shader Fine-Tuning and Perfect Loop Recording
29:43 — Personalized Acceptance Tickets
30:49 — Shader-Driven Branding at Arena Scale
Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
