# Saloni Girhepuje > Saloni Girhepuje is a founding product designer based in Bengaluru, India, working remotely with global startups - currently building creator economy tools at Hotly and shipping production UI in Next.js and Tailwind. ## About Saloni Girhepuje is a founding product designer with 5+ years of 0-to-1 experience across consumer, Web3, and AI products. At Hotly, a creator economy company shipping multiple products under one brand, she has led design across the slate - including Hotly Social Karaoke (a multiplayer karaoke product with fan-funded prizes), and currently Penpal (paid creator-fan messaging) and Dome (creator community spaces). Previously founding designer at Figr, where she built Identity, an AI-powered design system plugin that cut setup time from two weeks to ten minutes. Before Figr she co-founded Etherate Labs (Nov 2022-Aug 2023), a remote studio that shipped MVPs for blockchain and generative-AI clients, drove $600K+ in revenue at 60% conversion, and won three global hackathons (Tezos BlockBorn & Balthazar, Ubeswap Destiny, DeAuto DAO). She has worked on 40+ products for clients including Mobland, Absinthe Labs, Superteam, Airswap, and Samsung, with her designs helping early-stage startups raise $200K+. She writes her own Next.js and Tailwind to eliminate the design-to-engineering handoff on simple screens. ## Featured works - [Symmetry](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/symmetry): Hackathon-winning crypto platform redesign, built in three weeks in December 2023. Restructured the information architecture so first-time users and experienced traders could share one product without compromise. - [Hotly Social Karaoke (write-up in progress)](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/hotly): Hotly Social Karaoke - a multiplayer karaoke product where fans join a waiting room, get matched up to play live around an artist’s tracks, and compete for fan-funded prizes. Founding designer at Hotly. ## Projects - [Fontify](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/fontify): 3D font explorer built for Figma Make hackathon. Uses contrastive learning and a custom autoencoder to map 1000+ fonts by visual similarity. - [Stable Diffusion (write-up in progress)](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/stable-diffusion): Self-taught experiments running Stable Diffusion locally. Late 2023 to early 2024. The point was less about the images and more about the muscle: getting hands-on with bleeding-edge AI tooling before it had a friendly UI. - [Youth Olympic Medal Design 2024](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/yog-medal): Gold medal concept for Gangwon 2024 Youth Olympic Games. - [Second Brain](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/second-brain): Personal knowledge system for notes, ideas, and research - a home for everything I want to remember. - [AI for YouTube (write-up in progress)](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/ai-for-youtube): 2 Min AI - a YouTube channel concept that distills AI wisdom into two-minute videos, generated end-to-end with AI. Brand mark, mascot, and channel system. - [Ubeswap NFT Collection (write-up in progress)](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/ubeswap-nft): NFT (non-fungible token) collection designed for Ubeswap - characters, palette, and collectible system. Hackathon win. - [AI + D&D (LLM Experiment)](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/alcade): Interactive storytelling tool built with LangChain, OpenAI, and ChromaDB. Handles character generation, dynamic narrative, and image synthesis. - [Art Stuff](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/art-stuff): Loose collection of illustration, doodles, and visual experiments from sketchbooks and idle afternoons. - [Unphobia](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/unphobia): 2D top-down horror/comedy game made for GMTK Game Jam 2023. - [Wallet (write-up in progress)](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/wallet): Personal exploration of a minimal Solana transfer wallet. A one-day style study leaning hard into restraint, typography, and motion. Late 2022. - [Mee Games](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/meegames): Designed the product UI and brand identity for Mee Games, a Web3 gaming aggregator combining 50+ titles with a universal gaming ID, gas-fee reimbursement, and an AI assistant. Two-week freelance sprint in 2024 that fed into the team’s investor conversations. - [Figr Identity (write-up in progress)](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/figr-identity): AI-powered Figma plugin that generates full design system themes from a prompt, cutting setup time from two weeks to ten minutes. - [Sportzchain](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/sportzchain): Engage-to-Earn sports-crypto platform powered by $SPN, targeting 3.5B+ Asian sports fans with fan tokens, Watch-to-Earn, and fan commerce. Won the engagement off a scrappy Figma pitch prototype, then shipped landing, app, and user/team/admin dashboards as one of two designers in a six-person team. Doubled as PM. 2021. - [Symmetry](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/symmetry): Crypto platform redesign. Hackathon win, built in three weeks, designed for novices and experienced traders on the same screen. - [Gym Health Companion](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/gym-health): Companion fitness tracker that pairs with a gym admin app. Logs water, food, and workout sessions, then syncs back to the admin dashboard. Mapped the flows, designed screens and animations end-to-end. Early-career project, 2021. - [Hotly Social Karaoke (write-up in progress)](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/hotly): Hotly Social Karaoke walkthrough. Animated UI across the waiting room, player matchmaking, scoring, and fan-prize challenges. Founding designer. - [Dungeon Crawl](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/dungeon-crawl): Inventory and powerup game concept with dungeon-crawl mechanics, set in a hand-drawn fantasy world. - [NFT Mystery Box (write-up in progress)](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/nft-mystery-box): NFT Mystery Box concept that opened talks with Samsung and was developed for one of their consumer apps. Sold the idea in 2020-2021, built out through 2022. Samsung never released it. Sole designer at the start, joined later by a senior designer. - [Habibi](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/habibi): SocialFi concept piece designed to anchor a fundraising pitch. A creator-fan economy with a warmer, community-first social texture than the tradeable-access platforms then on the market. August 2023. - [Gym Management](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/gym-management): Admin counterpart to Gym Health Companion. Manages client bookings, trainer availability, scheduling, payments, and holiday-driven unavailability. Designed as one half of a paired consumer-plus-admin system. 2021. - [Etherate Labs](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/etherate): Co-founded Etherate Labs (Nov 2022 - Aug 2023), a remote studio building MVPs in blockchain and generative AI. Led product and design strategy across 7+ client engagements and 5+ in-house projects. Drove 60% conversion and $600K+ in revenue, shipped four MVPs in 2-4 week sprints, and won three global hackathons (DeAuto DAO, Ubeswap Destiny, Tezos BlockBorn & Balthazar). - [Echore](https://www.heysaloni.com/work/echore): Hackathon-winning Chrome extension for blockchain escrow and real-time transaction tracking. Won the Tezos BlockBorn & Balthazar Hackathon during the Etherate Labs era. Shipped with UI, working prototype, brand identity, and pitch deck. Later pitched to the Mantle network for cross-chain expansion. ## Find me - [Behance](https://www.behance.net/HeySaloni): Saloni's Behance portfolio with case studies, illustrations, and design experiments. - [Dribbble](https://dribbble.com/HeySaloni): Saloni's Dribbble shots - UI snippets, illustration, and design fragments. - [GitHub](https://github.com/Saloni-Girhepuje): Saloni's GitHub: side projects, plugins, and code experiments. - [Twitter / X](https://x.com/Hey_Saloni): Saloni on Twitter / X - design notes, builds, and snowboarding. - [Notion](https://heysaloni.notion.site): Saloni's public Notion at heysaloni.notion.site - notes, systems, and reading lists. - [Product Hunt](https://www.producthunt.com/@heysaloni): Saloni on Product Hunt - launches and product discovery. - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/the.projecter/): Saloni on Instagram (@the.projecter) - illustration, sketchbook pages, and side projects. - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/salonigirhepuje): Saloni on LinkedIn - work history, network, and roles. ## Full content - [https://www.heysaloni.com/llms-full.txt](https://www.heysaloni.com/llms-full.txt): concatenated page content for deep context - [https://www.heysaloni.com/sitemap.xml](https://www.heysaloni.com/sitemap.xml): all indexable URLs ## Contact Best reached via the social links above. For hiring or collaboration inquiries, mention context and timeline.