Ship AI-powered products that customers love & drive revenue

PH1 has partnered with dozens of leading agencies and consultancies as a trusted subcontractor, providing specialized UX research, product strategy, and service design capabilities that complement their core offerings. We operate seamlessly under agency brands with complete confidentiality—your client relationship remains fully intact while we deliver expert work behind the scenes. What distinguishes our subcontractor relationships is the seniority and autonomy we bring: we regularly serve as acting project leads on complex engagements, not just supplementary resources. Our team has led on-site workshops and executive working sessions on behalf of agency partners, facilitating strategic conversations directly with C-suite stakeholders and senior leadership teams. This means you can confidently position PH1 expertise as an extension of your own capabilities without concern about client-facing readiness. We understand agency economics and structure our pricing to preserve healthy margins for our partners. Embedded & FTE Contractor Arrangements While we're open to embedded arrangements where PH1 team members integrate with your internal teams, we believe our greatest value comes through consulting engagements rather than staff augmentation. Here's the uncomfortable truth about embedded models: they often reduce experienced strategists and researchers to task-takers, limiting the independent perspective and constructive challenge that drives meaningful outcomes. When PH1 operates as a consulting partner rather than a borrowed FTE, you gain practitioners who bring 20+ years of cross-industry pattern recognition, who aren't constrained by internal politics, and who are explicitly empowered to surface difficult truths your organization needs to hear. That said, we recognize some situations genuinely call for embedded support—team capacity gaps, parental leave coverage, or building internal capabilities through close collaboration. We're happy to discuss rates and structures for these arrangements during our initial conversation. We handle all employment logistics, simplifying your procurement and eliminating HR complexity on your end. Structuring the Right Relationship Whether subcontracting, consulting, or embedded, we customize IP assignment, confidentiality terms, reporting structures, and communication protocols to your specific requirements. Many of our longest and most impactful client relationships began through one model and evolved into another as trust developed and needs changed. Let's discuss which structure best serves your current objectives.