# The studio I built, then sold > I founded a design studio, then sold it to 10Pearls. What you gain and what you trade when the thing you built becomes a department. Source: https://umairalikhatri.com/writing/the-studio-i-built-then-sold/ Author: Umair Ali Khatri Updated: 2026-08-31 --- [← All writing](https://umairalikhatri.com/writing/) The path # The studio I built, then sold 31 August 2026 ยท 5 min read I built a design studio. Then I sold it. It became a department. That's the whole story. The rest is what changed when it did. ## Before the studio I started professionally in 2014, as Design Director at Vortechs Innovations. One year. I had a title and I had a boss. Then I left to build my own thing. For four years I did not have a boss. That turns out to be a specific feeling. You only notice it once it's gone, and then comes back. ## The studio I founded Two Dots Design Studio in 2016. I ran it as Founder and Managing Partner until 2020. It was mine. I named it. I chose the work, the people, the standard. When a project was wrong, that was on me. When it was good, that was mine too. A studio is small on purpose. Every decision lived in one room. Some days that room was only me. Alongside it I was Entrepreneur in Residence at The Nest I/O. Same four years. More than 60 startups mentored. I spent my days making things and my evenings telling founders how to make theirs. The two habits fed each other. ## The sale In 2020, 10Pearls acquired Two Dots. In November I became Head of User Experience and Design. Today I am Director of Product Experience and Services. The studio I built became a function inside a larger company. My title moved from Managing Partner to Head of. That preposition does more work than it looks like. Six years this November. Long enough to know what the trade cost. ## What you own When the studio is yours, you own all of it. The upside and the risk sit in the same pair of hands. You set the standard and nobody can lower it but you. You say no to the wrong client and you eat the lost month. You keep the lights on. Payroll is a number you feel in your chest near the end of every month. That weight is heavy. It is also the cleanest kind of ownership there is. Nothing is abstract when it's yours. You cannot hand off the last of it. The final call is always yours to sign. ## What you answer to A department answers upward. That is not a complaint. It is the shape of the thing. The canvas got much bigger. I stopped choosing between three clients and started shaping design across a company that has served 70+ organisations. The work has a scale I could not have reached alone. But the standard is now a shared standard. I argue for it. I no longer set it alone. There are budgets I did not write and priorities I did not pick. Some quarters the design call loses to the delivery call. I carry that outcome to my team as if it were mine. Often it has to be. That is the trade. You give up the last word to get a longer reach. ## The first year The first year was the hard one. I had spent four years as the person the buck stopped with. Then I had a manager again. Nobody did anything wrong. It was a muscle I had let go slack. Learning to move a decision up, instead of making it myself, felt like using the wrong hand. I write with my right hand and play padel with my left. This was that, at work. A capable hand I had not trained. ## What I gained Scale. A studio of a few became teams. I lead people now instead of doing every piece myself. Leading people is its own craft, and I am still learning it. A bigger canvas. The problems are larger and they matter more. One design decision here can touch products used by many. Room to build. I make design systems agent-ready now, which is [the work I do](https://umairalikhatri.com/work/). I could not have built that from a five-person studio. It needed the surface a company gives you. And distance from the till. I no longer feel payroll in my chest on the 28th. Someone else carries that weight. That is a real gift and I won't pretend it isn't. ## What I traded The studio was mine. A department is entrusted to me. Those are different things, and I felt the difference slowly rather than all at once. I traded the last word for a wider one. I traded a small clear room for a large one, with more people in it and more doors leading out. I traded a risk I owned for a risk I share. Some days I miss the room where every call was mine. Not the money worry. The clarity. ## The honest part Most founder-to-operator writing picks a side. Selling was the dream, or selling was the sellout. Neither is true. I gained more than I gave up. I also gave up something that does not come back. Both sentences are true, and I have stopped trying to make them agree. A studio teaches you to own. A department teaches you to lead through people who are not you, toward standards you do not fully control. I needed both lessons. I would not have learned the second one on my own. The dates are on [the path](https://umairalikhatri.com/about/). This is the part the dates leave out. I built a thing that was mine. I let it become a thing that is bigger than me. On a good day, that is not a loss. It is the next size up. Written for anyone deciding whether to sell the thing they built. If any of this feels familiar, say hello. [All writing](https://umairalikhatri.com/writing/)