High agency, inc.
Pencil fundamentally increases engineering speed by bringing design directly into IDEs, eliminating design handoffs through an agent-driven MCP canvas with an open design format that lives in the codebase.
Founding Story
Founded in 2025 by Tom Krcha, Pencil.dev was created to solve the friction between design and development by bringing design capabilities directly into the IDE. The vision is to eliminate traditional design handoffs and enable engineers to design and code in the same environment, accelerating the development process.
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Leadership
Founders
Tom Krcha
Tom Krcha is the Founder and CEO of Pencil.dev. Previously, he was Head of Product at Around (acquired by Miro in June 2022) and Co-founder & CTO of Alter avatars (acquired by Google for $100M in 2022). He spent nearly 10 years at Adobe in various roles including co-founding Adobe XD, Principal Product Manager, Lead Product Designer for Behance, and multiple evangelism roles (Creative Cloud, Gaming, Platform). He has deep expertise in product development, design, code, ML, 3D, AR, and audio/video.
Executive Team
Tom Krcha
Founder, CEO, Chief Vibe Officer
Former Head of Product at Around (acquired by Miro), Co-founder & CTO of Alter (acquired by Google), and Adobe veteran with roles in product management, design, and evangelism. Co-founded Adobe XD.
Business Model
Revenue Model
SaaS subscription model - currently in early access with 'Request Access' model, pricing not yet publicly disclosed
Pricing Tiers
Request access required, pricing structure not yet publicly available
Target Markets
- Software engineers and developers
- Full-stack developers
- Product teams
- Startups and tech companies
- AI-assisted development teams
- Teams using Cursor, VSCode, Claude Code, or OpenAI Codex
- Rapid prototyping and product development
- AI-assisted UI/UX design for engineers
- Full-stack development with integrated design
- Design system creation and management
- Collaborative design and development workflows
- Eliminating design-to-development handoffs
History & Milestones
Company founded by Tom Krcha
Joined a16z Speedrun Cohort 005 - 12-week early-stage accelerator program
Received investment from KAYA VC as part of their fifth fund
Public launch of Pencil - Infinite Design Canvas for Claude Code, Cursor, VSCode, and OpenAI Codex
