Vizcom is an AI-powered design tool company based in San Francisco (488 Bryant St). Founded in 2021 by Kaelan Richards (Co-Founder & CTO). Series B stage, 11-50 employees. Amy joined as a Product Design Engineer on January 28, 2026.
What Vizcom Does
Vizcom turns sketches into photorealistic 3D renders instantly. It is built for industrial designers, product designers, and creative professionals. Features include sketch-to-render, real-time iteration, material and lighting control, region-based edits, and most recently, SVG export and bill-of-materials generation.
Amy's LinkedIn description of a recent feature: "You can now quickly change colorways, break down product components, and even export a bill of materials showing how it was manufactured with exact materials, all with just a picture."
Jordan Taylor, a colleague, publicly welcomed Amy to the team on LinkedIn when she joined.
Amy's Role
Amy's role bridges design and manufacturing, the space she cares most about. Her boss plans to mentor her into a full software engineer role. Compensation: $250k base salary, approximately $421k total comp.
Amy describes Vizcom as the "chill job," a deliberate contrast to Taya. She chose it specifically to not grind.
From the April 1 diary: "Vizcom is supposed to be the chill job. I wanted the chill job. So why does stepping back from one project feel like I'm failing some test I made up for myself?"
By April 10, Amy articulated this more sharply: she does not care about Vizcom's future as a company. "The job, not the mission." She is here to learn engineering skills and eventually leave to start something of her own. Her signals for being ready to leave: (1) she can build a product herself, (2) she has an idea she can't stop thinking about, (3) she is ready to bet years on it. Current gaps: the engineering skills and the idea. This is not resentment; it is clarity. The chill job is a training ground with a known expiration date.
Work Projects
- Manufacturing panel: Amy's most "me" project at Vizcom, bridging the design side with real manufacturing constraints. She built the API mutations, plugin registration, and codegen. She described it as "literally the reason they hired me."
- Aura Farm: A project Amy initially tried to do everything on before recognizing the pattern from Taya. Emil took the lead, and Amy struggled with guilt about stepping back.
- Intern interviews: Amy interviewed candidates including Vishwa (built an FCP plugin with 1k+ paid users) and Aarna K. Nair (autonomous wildfire drone for XPRIZE).
- "The Delta" content series: Brainstormed at the April 10, 2026 board meeting. The concept: document the gap between what an AI render shows and what real manufacturing produces. Episode breakdown for a technical jacket project: render, pattern extraction, material sourcing, first sample, fix, water test, render vs reality comparison. This connects Amy's content strategy to Vizcom's product in a way that also serves her personal brand.
- Babson Buildathon demo: Kim Lu (Vizcom) cc'd Amy on a request to run a virtual Vizcom demo workshop at Babson's April 11, 2026 Buildathon (AI, Body & Mind theme). 500 students from Babson, Northeastern, Bentley, Bryant, MIT, and Harvard. Also offered judging slots.
People
- Kaelan Richards: Co-Founder and CTO. Amy's direct manager. Planning to mentor Amy into a full software engineer role.
- Gene Bonannella: Senior engineer at Vizcom. Began offering Amy mentorship in April 2026. Represents the "learn engineering skills" side of why Amy is at Vizcom.
- Jordan Taylor: Colleague who publicly welcomed Amy on LinkedIn.
- Emil: Colleague who took the lead on Aura Farm.
The Makerspace
Vizcom has a makerspace at their SF headquarters. The Hardware Craft Night on April 9 and a Lego building event on May 14 are both hosted there.
Social Media
Amy posts manufacturing-focused content on Twitter (@amypretzel, ~6,400 followers) and LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/amy7, ~7,000 followers). Her most successful tweet was about CAD accessibility: "CAD should be free and easy to learn. Solidworks costs 2000+ per user per year." Her viral hit was about design software and had 34K likes and 928K views.
Her content style: "hot take" openers, personal anecdotes from engineering experience, and specific manufacturing observations. Examples: "Factories don't care about your pitch deck," "The expensive part of premium isn't the material. It's the chamfer radius you barely notice."