About
A studio built out of curiosity
We build software honestly. That includes the bugs and the dead ends.
A letter from the founder
I grew up looking for things that probably weren't there. Tracks at the edge of a field, a shape in the treeline, a story an aunt told once and never repeated. It turns out that's excellent training for building software: you learn to take a faint signal seriously, and you learn to be honest when it turns out to be a shadow.
Cryptid Studio exists because I wanted curiosity to be how I actually worked, not just something I did on the side. We build our own products because it keeps us fluent — you cannot advise a team on shipping if you have not been afraid of a deploy recently. And we take client work because it opens doors into worlds we wouldn't have found on our own — every project is an invitation into someone else's problem we wouldn't have thought to ask about.
We're small on purpose, so the person you talk to is the person doing the work — that's the whole product.
If you're still figuring out what you're building, that's usually the good part. Come tell us about it anyway. We'll help you find the shape.
What we hold to
Curiosity is the method
We start every project by learning something genuinely new. If a brief doesn't teach us anything, we're probably the wrong studio for it.
Prototypes over promises
Arguments get settled by building the smallest real version. Decks are for recording decisions, not making them.
Subtraction is craft
Most of our best work is what we removed. We measure a release by what it no longer asks of the user.
Say the true thing
Honest scope, honest estimates, honest 'we wouldn't build that'. It costs us projects and earns us the right ones.
Leave it maintainable
Every engagement ends with your team more capable than when we arrived. No hostages, no black boxes.
Make room for wonder
There's always a detail with no business case — the animation, the illustration, the easter egg. We keep it. It's why people stay.
How we got here
2017
Formal training, then straight to client work
Digital Design and Animation at Grand Canyon University — Dean's List. Started taking on real design clients before the degree was even finished.
2021
KRM Creative Studio
Branding, design, and photography for real clients, solo, for about four years — under my initials, since I hadn't landed on anything better. Learned the parts of running a creative business that no class teaches.
2023
Design thinking, off the artboard
Joined EverBright in customer support, then moved into escalations — Attorney General complaints, BBB disputes, fraud cases, attorney demands. Contributed to the SOPs and training materials other agents still use. It's where design thinking stopped being theoretical and started being how I actually solved people's problems.
2026
Cryptid Studio
Founded in May to test one thing: could the product ideas I'd been circling for years actually get built, not just planned. Content Conjurer shipped in June, Grimoire Keeper followed in July, and Rootbound entered active development.