What happens when a top design leader at Google gets laid off during a company-wide AI pivot?

For Maya Elise Joseph-Goteiner, an incredibly talented designer, researcher, thinker, builder…and leader, it became the unexpected launchpad for founding Velocity Ave, a nimble research and strategy agency built on clarity, collaboration, and curiosity. In my conversation with Maya (which I loved), she shared what she had to unlearn from big tech, how “ignorance” became her superpower as a founder, and why design is no longer just about user experience, it’s about negotiating between technology, business, and humanity. This is a must-read for any designer or leader rethinking what comes next in a rapidly shifting world.

In this issue/episode:

1. From Big Tech to Founder: Letting Go to Step Into Clarity

2. Design Leadership as Foundership: Ignorance Is a Superpower

3. What Design Really Is…and Why It Matters More Than Ever

4. Want to go deeper? Check out Velocity Ave’s Journal!

— Justin Lokitz

Insights

• 00:00 – Intro: From Google to Founder

• 02:12 – Working at Area 120 and the impact of internal culture

• 05:48 – The emotional and strategic fallout of being laid off

• 09:15 – Parallel paths: job search vs building an agency

• 12:22 – Unlearning control and redefining ownership as a founder

• 16:45 – Ignorance as a superpower in client work

• 20:10 – Building Velocity Ave: structure, rituals, and collaboration

• 24:50 – AI and founders: tension between tech and values

• 28:03 – The future of design: systems, ethics, and strategy

• 32:27 – Her upcoming book and lessons for designer-founders

• 35:18 – Final thoughts: finding clarity on the outside

Read on for my main takeaways from our conversation. 🎧 And…listen to the recording of our full conversation on the Design Shift podcast on Spotify and Apple and the Design Shift YouTube channel.

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Design Deep Dive

Break the System, Build What’s Next: Design Lessons from the Edge

From redefining leadership after leaving big tech to embracing ignorance as a strategic advantage, Maya offers a refreshingly honest take on what it really means to lead with design in today’s complex, AI-driven world. These insights aren’t just reflections; they’re actionable provocations for any designer or creative leader ready to challenge assumptions, build with clarity, and shape the future of their work on their own terms.

Here are the three biggest takeaways from our conversation…

From Big Tech to Founder: Letting Go to Step Into Clarity

“When you’re within corporate… you almost don’t realize how you’re not making personal decisions.”

Maya’s journey from big tech to agency founder didn’t start with a grand vision. It started with a shock.

She was one of the 12,000 laid off from Google in 2023 during a massive internal shift toward AI. At the time, she had just finished leading a two-hour strategy workshop with Google’s investment partners on (super ironically) how to prepare for generative AI disruption. The next day, her job was gone.

“I wasn’t honest with myself about the risk,” she admitted. She had seen the writing on the wall but chose to ignore it because she loved her team, her work, and the structure around her. She didn’t leave Google; she was ejected from it. And that, she says, was the moment clarity began.

Inside big tech, Maya enjoyed autonomy, but it was autonomy within a defined set of norms, values, and systems. You’re making decisions, yes, but only within an invisible sandbox built by company culture, product roadmaps, and executive OKRs. “There was a lot that was already defined,” she said, reflecting on her years at Area 120. “And I had to redefine some of these things for myself on the outside.”

As she stepped into the founder role at Velocity Ave, Maya realized that letting go of control wasn’t failure. It was freedom. She no longer had to tie her value to the outcome of a product launch she couldn’t fully influence. Instead, she could focus on meaningful process, real problem discovery, and building a company that reflected her values, not someone else’s.

Her shift wasn’t linear. She applied for full-time jobs for months while quietly building the agency on the side. She tested both paths in parallel. But one by one, the signs pointed her toward entrepreneurship. Full-time roles felt too narrow. The security of a salary no longer felt guaranteed. And she saw, clearly, that her real differentiator—her breadth, her systems view, her instinct to design for ambiguity—was something clients needed more than any single job title.

The big takeaway?

Leaving big tech doesn’t start with a résumé update. It starts with shedding the invisible armor that made decisions for you, and having the courage to step into a space where YOU can make new ones.

Design Leadership as Foundership: Ignorance Is a Superpower

“Because you have that ignorance, you also have permission to scope better… to help your clients articulate and define things in a crisp way.”

Many design leaders dream of starting their own agency or product company. But they worry: Do I know enough? Can I really lead from the outside?

Maya argues that this so-called “ignorance” is actually your superpower.

Inside large organizations, designers are often weighed down by internal politics, org charts, and legacy processes. There’s a silent agreement that everyone is “on the same page”, but no one really is. On the outside, as a founder, you must ask the hard questions. You have to map the system. You’re not expected to know the answers; you’re expected to find them.

That is what makes designers uniquely equipped to become founders. Our craft is about curiosity and decision-making under uncertainty. We ask the uncomfortable questions. We synthesize complexity. And when we lead, we don’t dictate—we facilitate.

Maya built Velocity Ave as a living example of this philosophy. Her team is radically collaborative, meeting daily, sharing live work-in-progress, and drawing from a deep bench of domain experts and perspectives. “It’s not a one-person show,” she says. “You’re cuddling all these different experts. You’re looking at the space from multiple angles. That helps us go in with stronger operating assumptions.”

She also makes the point that, as outsiders, they can look at competitors and market trends without the legal constraints many in-house teams face. That gives her clients sharper, faster insights—and allows her team to operate at true velocity.

For designers considering the founder path, Maya offers three pieces of advice:

1. Get real feedback from people you’ve worked with: What actually makes you stand out?

2. Study your market like a strategist: What value do others offer? What gap can you fill?

3. Audit your time: What gives you energy? What drains it? What will you still have to do even when you hate it?

In Maya’s words, “If there’s no clear signal about your uniqueness, it’s a sign you need to keep developing.”

The founder path isn’t about perfection. It’s about leading with questions, showing your work, and helping others find clarity. After all, we’re all just prototypes of our future selves. Own it!

In a world of AI tools and automated workflows, it’s the human ability to hold ambiguity and make sense of it—that’s the founder’s edge.

What Design Really Is…and Why It Matters More Than Ever

“Design is about negotiating and balancing implications between technology, business, and market.”

This isn’t your typical design definition. And that’s the point.

When asked what design means to her, Maya doesn’t start with users, pixels, or even experiences. She starts with systems thinking. “Yes, we create value for humans,” she says. “But where our special sauce really is, is in that negotiation and balance.”

Designers sit at the crossroads of possibility and consequence. We’re often the only ones asking, “What will this mean for people? What trade-offs are we making for speed, scale, or shareholder return?” In Maya’s view, design is the connective tissue between tech capability, business logic, and social context.

This systems view is becoming more critical as we enter what Maya calls a dual era of industrial revolution and renaissance.

• The industrial revolution is AI, automation, and accelerated decision-making.

• The renaissance is cultural: a rising tension between tech and the values of Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

Maya believes these forces are on a collision course. “They don’t seem aligned,” she says. “And it has major implications for businesses and products.”

This is where design must step in.

Designers must now shape not only the user experience, but the organizational clarity, market fit, and ethical alignment behind every experience. That means being involved in product strategy, investment decisions, and cultural change. It means moving from how should this look? to why does this exist?

As Maya puts it, “Businesses have liability and accountability. And design is part of that accountability.”

Designers have always tested ideas. Now we must test systems. We must shape the conversations that define what’s possible, not just polish what’s already been decided.

The future of design is strategic, systemic, and deeply human.

Justin’s Notes

Firstly, it must be said: way back in 2022, I interviewed Maya for the Everything’s a Prototype podcast. So, some of our conversation was an evolution of what we had spoken about before.

For instance, whereas she was happily running Google’s Area 120 when we last spoke, she has since left and is creating something even better. Likewise, as a leader, while she managed a terrific team of design researchers before, her scope as a founder/owner of a kickass agency is much broader.

Having said that, I love speaking with Maya. Full stop. She is open, honest, and future-looking. Her thoughts about design, AI, and what it means to be a designer founder feel at once a continued evolution of where she started her career, but also a statement written with a Sharpie (i.e., indelible ink).

Design is indeed about form, function, the human experience, as well as ALL of the interconnected systems at play. As designers and founders, if we’re not designing and building for desirability, feasibility, and viability, while also considering the ecosystem of stakeholders and the future, well…we’re doing ourselves and our customers/stakeholders a disservice.

Toward the end of our conversation, I felt like we could simply continue to talk shop about the state of things while also ideating on what’s next. In fact…though I did not record this part, we did indeed ideate a bit on the what’s next side of things. If we do end up co-creating something, we will be sure to share it here.

Want more? Connect with Maya and tell her Justin sent you!

Resources

• Velocity Ave.

• What is Desirability, Viability, and Feasibility?

Subscribe to Design Shift for more conversations that help creative professionals grow into strategic leaders.

Want to go deeper?

Maya and her team at Velocity Ave. are constantly creating…not just for their clients, but for the world (i.e., us). The best place to read and interact with their work, including some truly fantastic, extensive reports, is on the Journal.

In fact, in May 2025, they published an open-source report titled, “Our First Independent Research Report on How People Relate to Money, Risk, and Financial Success”. This report deep dives into…

• What worries people about money — no matter how much they have?

• What empowers them to pursue financial and personal goals?

• How do they define financial success beyond individual wealth?