Built to build, Ruca is a design cooperative focused on developing products, establishing brands, and scaling businesses in new ways to deliver better results.

Ruca Design Cooperative | Partners in Product & Marketing

This is home page

Home

et iusto sed quo iure
voluptatem occaecati omnis eligendi aut ad
voluptatem doloribus vel accusantium quis pariatur
molestiae porro eius odio et labore et velit aut. et iusto sed quo iure
voluptatem occaecati omnis eligendi aut ad
voluptatem doloribus vel accusantium quis pariatur
molestiae porro eius odio et labore et velit aut. et iusto sed quo iure
voluptatem occaecati omnis eligendi aut ad
voluptatem doloribus vel accusantium quis pariatur
molestiae porro eius odio et labore et velit aut. et iusto sed quo iure
voluptatem occaecati omnis eligendi aut ad
voluptatem doloribus vel accusantium quis pariatur
molestiae porro eius odio et labore et velit aut. et iusto sed quo iure
voluptatem occaecati omnis eligendi aut ad
voluptatem doloribus vel accusantium quis pariatur
molestiae porro eius odio et labore et velit aut

Who we are | Ruca

Who we are - Our Story

Who we are

looking to move away from bloated agency models with all their organizational overhead and headaches.

See Services

We partner with companies

that we genuinely believe in—and that can truly benefit from our support.

See Ventures

We invest in companies

that are underrepresented and greatly valued by those in the Ruca community.

See the Foundation

We give back to organizations

to solve big challenges and introduce novel experiences to the world.

We build our own products

What we do | Ruca

What We Do

What we do

Ruca works across product, brand, marketing, digital, and beyond to solve problems and produce results regardless of the shape or size of the business. We see things at scale and know how to move at a speed that makes sense for our clients and gets them exactly where they need to go. Our clients want to get things done as simply and efficiently as possible and they trust us to do just that

Who we work with | Ruca

Who We Work With

Who we work with

Nina Gould · Chief Product Officer

I consider Ruca to be a kind of SWAT team for Forbes. We can deploy them as needed when we need accelerated traction, in-depth industry knowledge, or to hit an aggressive timeline that might be impossible for us to hit with our internal resources. We've worked with Ruca on a variety of projects: from large all encompassing engagements like our site rebrand and redesign, to small targeted projects that require in-depth user research and product positioning within a competitive space
I think Ruca's superpower is how they get to know your business and your needs at an almost cellular level, and how they then work with me and other internal stakeholders, and most importantly with the internal teams who will eventually inherit the output of their work to set direction, scope and deliverables based on the true needs of the business and not just for today or tomorrow but to support long-term strategic growth.
Our collaborations with Ruca have felt like exactly that, like true collaboration between partners to achieve mutual goals. And I've truly enjoyed working with every member of the Ruca team that's been involved on a Forbes project. To a person they are smart, talented, dedicated, and most of all, just good folks.

Richard Flood · VP, Chief Advancement Officer

Hi, my name is Richard Flood and I'm the Vice President Chief Investment Officer at the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation. We are the fundraising partner of the National Park Service for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island National Monuments. Ruca has been a valued partner of ours on the planning, design and launch of our new website statueofliberty.org.
Selecting Ruca was an easy decision given we were so impressed with the work that they've done for other clients. And we couldn't be more pleased with that decision, as well as the work that they've completed for us. Almost immediately after launching the website, we saw a significant uptick in donor engagement as well as increases in product sales. The new website really was successful in accomplishing so many of our goals and priorities. Since the website's launch, Ruca has also made themselves available to assist with post-production questions and they were always willing to partner again to enhance the website as it continues to evolve. The team of experts we worked with are unmatched. We couldn't be more pleased with the results.

Dan Sampson · Chief Marketing & Communications Officer

I can't say enough about Ruca as a company. Not only are they experts creatively and technically, the customer and client service is something that I have rarely experienced in the past. They really take time to understand your company's mission, your goals, your culture, your brand, and all of that gets synthesized and interpreted into what ends up as beautiful work deliverables and work product.
That really is quite something to experience when you have an agency that so closely aligns with your brand and goes to such ends to understand what it is you do as a company, and produce the best work possible. I can't say enough about Ruca. If there's a choice between Ruca or another agency, there is no choice. It's Ruca.

Colleen Rubart · Former VP, Brand and Communications

When I was vetting web developers, I asked around my network for recommendations. A dear talented friend of mine made one recommendation that was Ruca. We met and found that our organizations had a meeting of the minds, similar approaches, intents, and ultimately ended up being a match made in heaven. The Ruca team was excellent at delivering the creative that worked for us, that continues to work for us, as well as delivering product on time which was really critical to the plans we had in place.

Chris Connor · Senior Director, Global Marketing

Working with the Ruca team has been wonderful. They bring a level of experience and strategic thinking that I haven't seen from other agencies. They understand our business as well as our own subject matter experts and they are able to translate our complex service offering into an easy to understand story. We are fortunate to have them as partners and an extension of our team.

Andy Rooks · Head of Marketing

Hi, this is Andy Rooks, Head of Marketing at Nitra. I really can't say enough good things about the team at Ruca. I've worked with many agencies in the past both as a client and as an employee and owner. The model that they have here is really something special. They have an exceptionally high standard for project execution, and communicating with their team is pretty much seamless. So this might also go without saying but they're really genuinely nice people too. Anyway, if you have the chance to work with Ruca, take it.

Peg Sandeen · Chief Executive Officer

My name is Peg Sandeen, and I'm the CEO of Death with Dignity. We recently engaged the Ruca team to help us with the visual articulation of our brand and a new website to go along with it. We're a small team and this was a big project for us, but I couldn't be more pleased with Ruca's work. We knew we wanted to boldly change our visual presence in the world and the Ruca team expertly captured our vision for the future of our organization. And at the same time, the process of working with them was smooth, expectations and timelines were transparent. They delivered the project on time and within budget. Overall, it was simply an all around great project with the Ruca team, and well worth our investment. Good luck on your project.

Victor Ortiz · VP, Product

When Ruca reached out and asked me to speak about what our partnership has been like, the first thing that came to mind is that I don't have a partnership with Ruca. What I do have is a team member named Cami, an awesome UX designer who pushes and challenges our team every day to create better human-centric experiences. We have Ernesto, a rockstar product designer who brings pixels to life for us and ensures that our designs are achieving their intended objectives. We have Nolan, our superstar creative director who's always steering the ship and ensuring that we are focused on delivering the right value and providing guidance for our designers. And there's Tobi, a true partner who I trust to build out long term strategic resourcing plans with and is always making sure that our team is firing on all cylinders.
Ruca has achieved what so many agencies often set out to accomplish but failed to execute as intended. Working with Ruca does not feel like you're working with an agency. They truly are a part of our team and we love working with them every day. They're so much fun to work with, we're always laughing together and they're just really great people. Together we've built some great experiences and then tackled incredibly challenging and difficult design problems. Together, we are a rockstar team.

Keith Weckstein · Sr. Director of Event Logistics

CoinDesk is the largest news source about the crypto economy, Web3, and blockchain and other related information. And it hosts one of the largest annual conferences in the United States, Consensus. CoinDesk asked Ruca to redesign the Consensus 2023 Conference website and accompanying mobile site with a new overall experience that reflects the emerging markets, technologies and financial systems that we report on every day. Ruca delivered a clean design, infused with subtle micro-interactions and textures that visually unify the entire experience across platforms, while still delighting, surprising, and enticing site visitors. The site launched in November 2022.

Kim Callender · Founder & CEO

Hi there, this is Kim Callender. I had engaged with Ruca shortly after leaving Google to fund my company SoloTrvlr. I was referred by a trusted friend and from the first conversation, I was really impressed with their ability to adapt their process and approach to businesses at all stages.
As an early-stage startup, flexibility is super important and we're constantly learning and taking in new information. Ruca helped me clarify our brand values which fed back into our product and all of our marketing messaging. And I can't speak highly enough to the design work that the team did early on. We quickly landed on a direction that ended up scaling incredibly well across our online platform, marketing sites, mobile and more. And on the product strategy side, they've been an amazing partner, both to discuss and validate ideas with, and to just come back to as we start to get input and iterate from there. So thank you Ruca.

Keith Landis · Chief Marketing Officer

Hello. This is Keith Landis, Chief Marketing Officer at Persistent Systems. Over the last year following some work to modernize our brand, we embarked on a comprehensive transformation of our website. And after looking at several partners for us that we could potentially partner with around the globe, we selected Ruca fortunately.
Why? Well, first and foremost, they really went above and beyond to immerse themselves in our brand and our rich history in the digital engineering space right from the get go during the proposal phase. Second, they really proactively demonstrated an inspiring vision that got us excited about what the new website could deliver to all of our stakeholders, whether it was clients, prospects, employees, investors, potential new talent that we may be recruiting to the company, and they thought about it both as a brand experience but also really the digital front door for our business. And finally, they put forward a flexible, agile, more nimble project approach than the other agencies that we were looking at, that would really allow us to get to market faster with an MVP, but at the same time set us up for longer term success and scalability. So even at the proposal phase, they were really demonstrating that they wanted our business and that they could punch above their weight, so to speak, compared to other more established agencies that maybe had been around for a longer time.
The good thing is that once the project kicked off, we're really happy to see this attitude, this approach, this kind of trusted adviser mindset continue on. As far as staffing, Ruca really brought a really diverse and seasoned team of talent across design, brand, content, digital, and even more technical disciplines to the table and really, that's because these folks have worked at some of the top agencies in the world, and done work either at agencies or within some of the top brands in the in the world as well. So really seasoned team, really diverse, great energy, and also throughout the project.
They've demonstrated really strong leadership in terms of collaboration and their ability to collaborate with existing functions within Persistent, whether it was our marketing team, be it brand, digital, solution, marketers, or even our more technical team within the CIO organization and being able to help them with knowledge transfer and things as we started to wind down the project and make sure they set us up for future success. So with the help of Ruca, we were really able to do a complete reboot of our web footprint within just a few months. And we could build, develop and share a broader brand story in the market, drive higher engagement with all of our stakeholders.
At the end of the day, we're seeing huge increases year on year in terms of our key digital metrics, be it traffic, engagement and conversion. So huge improvements there. We've seen a steady stream of inbound leads coming in, including some of the largest wins we've had as a company have actually come through the new website, which is a really promising development.
In addition, we're also using the website to attract new talent to Persistent. As we grow our business, it's been important that this become a front door for future employees. But in the end, it's a thing of pride to see our employees across the company reach out, say such good things about the website, and to know that they take pride in working for a company that that has the digital front door and we couldn't have done it without Ruca as our partner throughout this and we continue our journey with them, exploring new ways that the company can help us advance both our brand and our digital footprint. So big thanks to the Ruca team, and thanks to Chris Bystrom for all he did to make this happen.

Salah Zalatimo · CEO

I have worked with Ruca across multiple companies on several large scale projects. They have consistently shown flexibility, speed, and top talent. And that's the reason why I've continued to work with them.

Brandon Eckroth · Design and Creative Program Lead

Hey there, Brandon Eckroth here. I am the Design Creative Program Lead here at Zocdoc. I've been here for almost half a decade, and Ruca has actually been helping us out at Zocdoc for even longer than that—longer than I've been here.
Ever since I can remember, Ruca has been kind of the linchpin to our creative program. They've helped out with everything from marketing work to product work to illustration work. They kind of run the gamut—they’re a jack of all trades. They can do anything we throw at them. We work with them on a daily basis and meet with them weekly. They, in a sense, aren’t even just an agency for us—they’re part of the team. We’re so thankful for their partnership and just know that Ruca is the type of team that can do it all, no matter what you throw at them. So, super thankful for them. Can’t wait to continue working with them for as long as possible.

Angela Lester · Partner, Design & Innovation

Hi. I'm Angela Lester, Design and Innovation Leader at PwC. I've had the pleasure of partnering with Ruca over quite a while now. And we leverage the Ruca design team and strategic team for multiple different projects, most of which are highly complex transformations that require specialized skills from design, UX, copywriting, strategic thinking and planning, deck design and storytelling and so on and so forth.
It's been an incredibly powerful partnership for us, allowing us to scale and work quickly. And the team integrates seamlessly into ours, whether it's an agile program, or a high-level concepting or visioning exercise, or really any kind of integration that we need to do. I highly, highly recommend Ruca for many many different types of projects.

Jen Schutzman · Global Executive Director

Ruca has supported the launch of our signature Forces Of Fashion event site for two years in a row. With the demand to switch to a virtual platform for both 2020 and 2021, Ruca was critical in our delivery of an elevated experience expected for the Vogue brand in a digital space. The Ruca team seamlessly integrated with our internal design, marketing, and events teams. I would highly recommend them to anyone. Thank you.

Suzanne Kirschbaum · VP of Marketing & Communications

We love Ruca. We are demanding clients. We know this about ourselves, and so it always just feels like we're looking for partners that are a better fit, particularly on design projects. And Ruca just very quickly grasped our brand, our feel, our vibe, and we're able to really integrate that into our project immediately without a lot of the back and forth and just kind of frustration that often comes when someone is struggling to get your brand in your goals, and they just nailed it.
The first project we did with them was a legacy project, but we were moving it all online. And so the stakes felt pretty high, you know, both internally and externally. And because of this move, we also had a tight timeline and they just excelled at each stage—staying on deadlines, staying within budget, delivering beautiful design and just being really additive. And so they're just good smart people who are really great at what they do.

Shawn Warn · Senior Director, Brand & Content

What I love most about Ruca is that I can call them for anything I need around brand strategy, and they quickly find a resource to help me. Anything from naming a new product to helping us create the whole brand architecture, to just creating some messaging that we might need for one of our specific partnerships. I can always count on them to come through for me and help me with the right resources, the right strategic thinking, and the right timeline. I really appreciate that about Ruca and would recommend them to any other marketing team.

Greg Hathaway · Executive Creative Director

Hi, this is Greg Hathaway, Executive Creative Director at Trailborn. I've worked with and known the founder and core team at Ruca for 15 years, and I've worked with Ruca as a core partner at two different companies spanning six years and counting. Ruca is our embedded digital team across design, UX, SEO, and dev. At Trailborn, this allows us to evolve quickly — to identify everything from impactful core shifts in our digital product to navigating ongoing performance updates. At the end of the day, Ruca combines the expertise of an agency with the velocity and collaboration of an in-house team. This makes the process a joy and the results impactful.

David Schmudde · Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer

Hello, my name is David Schmudde, and I work with the folks at Ruca on the Yorba team. What makes the arrangement so pleasant is that these are people that really know their strengths. They, of course, get things done on time and on budget, but they lean into the strength of great design—and specifically, the intangible strength of great taste. What that latter thing means is that they find a way to self-select and surround themselves with a crew of really talented project managers, talented designers, talented artists, illustrators, animators, and even coders who put together an exceptionally high-quality outcome—and, in our case, product.

Keith Kryszczun · Commercial Lead of Americas

Hi! My name is Keith Kryszczun. I work for Inrupt, where I run commercial operations for the Americas. I started working really closely with Chris and the Ruca team about three years ago. We really shared a vision for building great products and services that would fundamentally change the digital identity and data dynamics of the internet. It was really based on how we build great products and services that also give end users more control over their digital identity and data. This is something that Ruca fundamentally believes in. They're really solving the hard problems of this — which is the user experience: how do you let people do this in easier ways and not harder ways? Because they're very complicated problems. Ruca has just been an amazing partner with us, with incredible expertise in this area, and we look forward to the continued relationship.

Lisa Burby · VP of Corporate Communications & Public Relations

We needed an agency to help us with a brand refresh, as we're a very small team. And I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, Ruca is probably among the very best that I've ever worked with. They're responsive, creative, and experts in their field. They provided such a phenomenal service to us that we'll continue to use them again and again, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Larry Rosenzweig · Co-Founder & CEO

My name is Larry Rosenzweig, Co-Founder and CEO of Cquence. We are an AI driven video editing startup that Ruca has invested in, not just financially but with their benefits and services outside of their check. I knew An from a previous job, she's been a mentor, an advisor. Really just like one of our earliest and most passionate supporters of what we're building here in Cquence, and she's able to give us advice around fundraising, around hiring, around growth, etc. On top of that Ruca has an extensive network of designers and developers and we were able to work with one of Ruca's top designers for a month to completely revamp our website.
Since that revamp, we've seen a spike in our growth numbers, our recruiting pipeline increasing because we're able to put our best foot forward through our website and that top of funnel which Ruca was able to help us do when we're still early stage and didn't necessarily want to invest in a larger redesign or a longer revamp with another agency. Ruca was able to help us in multifaceted ways beyond writing the check and it's always a pleasure to be part of the community, especially on their Slack channel, and being able to engage and meet up with folks even in person as well. I just want to thank Ruca and Chris and the whole team for all of your support. We look forward to continuing working with you guys as Cquence continues to grow.

Samira Sohail · Product Strategist

Ruca had fresh ideas, was responsive throughout our process and open to feedback every step of the way. It was a pleasure to co-create with them, and they produce a high-quality Design System that met our global and tech startup needs. I highly recommend working with them.

We wanted to know exactly what our clients and partners have to say about our work, so we invited them to leave a voice message and share their thoughts. Listen in below.

Ruca partners, unfiltered. Get the full story of what it's like to work with the design cooperative straight from the clients.

Ruca in stereo | Ruca

Ruca In Stereo

Ruca in stereo

Building a Leadership Team: 16 Tips for Startup Growth

Q&A with Tobi DeVito, Co-Founder + Head of Services at Ruca

Ready to Master Your Budget? Consider These 19 Personal Tips on the Best Time for Planning and Forecasting

In Her Own Words: Tobi DeVito branches out to make agency life manageable

How Did Implementing a Piece of Marketing Technology Transform Your Team’s Productivity?

HRTech Interview with Tobi DeVito, Co-Founder of Ruca

"Human touch remains irreplaceable in design”: a day in the life Nolan Cabeje

Founder & CEO Reveals How to Redesign Organizations and Empower Digital Transformation

25 Lessons Learned From Entrepreneurs Who Bootstrapped Their Startups

Meet the Disruptors: Chris Zeunstrom Of Ruca & Yorba On the Five Things You Need to Shake Up Your Industry

This CFO knows how to motivate employees

Enough about us. Let's talk about you. Reach out to Ruca to learn how we can work together to improve products, scale results, and elevate design.

Your Ideas.Our Ears.Talk to Us Today.

See our Services

Your Ideas.
Our Ears.
Talk to Us Today.