Hi, I'm Ricardo Crespo, creator of Irakasi.
I'm an Industrial Engineer from Bilbao, though I've spent most of my career far from anything that fits neatly in a job title. Product designer, project manager, R&D lead, educator, founder. Mostly I've been the person in the room trying to help complicated things make sense to someone else.
The tool that didn't exist
I remember the first time I felt it clearly. I was working as a product manager at an automotive company. A colleague didn't understand how injection mould sliders work: mechanical parts that move relative to the mould when an injected piece has undercuts that prevent extraction. Simple concept. Ten engineers in the room, and nobody could land it.
We didn't have access to the animation module for our CAD software. We couldn't install anything on company computers. So people started cutting up paper and moving them to simulate the movement. Others drew on the whiteboard with countless arrows and colors. Everyone was improvising.
I knew what was needed: something you could open right then, sketch a few shapes, and animate them just enough to make the point. Not a full 3D package, not a production animation tool. Just something in between, with no setup and no learning curve between you and the idea.
That tool didn't exist. I kept running into versions of the same problem for years.
I waited a long time for someone else to build it. Eventually I realized that wasn't going to happen, at least not in the way I needed it to.
The explanation for the mould problem made with Irakasi. Done in 5 minutes after 15 years
So I built it myself
In 2023 I left everything else and started, not just building Irakasi, but learning how to build it. I had written some code before, mostly small web tools as a side product of other work, but nothing like this. It meant starting from scratch on a lot of things.
Part of what kept me going was the reason I was building it in the first place. I've always believed the best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else. I needed the best possible tool for that, not just for others, but for myself.
My vision for Irakasi
Irakasi is designed to be a powerful toy. The goal was something you could pick up in seconds and follow a thought with, but that wouldn't hit a ceiling when it got complicated.
Most tools make you choose between approachable and capable. They either hide too much or show too much. I wanted something that reveals complexity only when you reach for it, built around a small set of concepts that stretch across many uses.
The aesthetic is part of that. Irakasi produces rough, clean visuals by default. That's not a limitation: a sketch keeps your audience focused on the idea. The moment something looks finished, people start critiquing the details instead of engaging with the content.
It's also an opinionated tool. Some conventions reflect my own way of working and can feel unfamiliar at first. I've tried to make them consistent enough that once they click, they feel obvious. But there is a short learning curve, and I think it's worth it.
Built in public
Irakasi is in early development. There is a lot still to build, and the gap between where it is and where it is going is part of what makes this an exciting moment to be using it.
The trade-off is real though. I'm moving fast, which means things break, interfaces change, and data can be lost without warning. Please do not rely on it for anything important yet. If you use it today, treat it as an experiment.
Follow the journey
If you want to follow along as Irakasi grows, the best place right now is my X account. I share updates, experiments, and the occasional behind-the-scenes look at what I'm building.