What is the Designer Fund?
We’re a community of designers who invest in designer founders through mentorship, funding, and access to our network. Designers can apply for an investment, then our community will evaluate and select applicants to invest in. We are NOT another incubator. Instead, we help match designer founders with mentors, angels, accelerators, seed funds and later stage VCs.
Our sponsoring partners include top tier investors such as Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, KPCB, 500 Startups, KKLD, Venture51 and Quest Venture Partners.
Who are we looking for?
Designers whose success in business generates meaningful impact (positive social impact at scale), particularly through the use of new IT experiences. Every six months we look to invest in a balanced mix of designers across three stages: prototype, alpha and beta. We're focusing on designer founders primarily based in Silicon Valley but we're open to those located in other major metropolitan and startup hubs.
Designer Founders : The Book
Stories by designers of tech startups
This is a non-profit book of 35+ rare personal interviews with the founders of tech-startups who have various design backgrounds such as Chad Hurley (YouTube), David Karp (Tumblr), Matt Shobe (Feedburner), Caterina Fake (Flickr) . . .
Featured
Designer founders who dare the path of tech entrepreneurship
December 1 2011
FastCoDesign wrote earlier this year about a new VC model, called the Designer Fund, a community of designers that invest in designer founders. The point is not to get caught up in titles and challenge the role of founders with engineering backgrounds but to highlight the emerging opportunity for founders with design expertise. . . .
Who is involved?
Our founders, mentors and angels range from early stage designers at YouTube, Facebook, Google, and Twitter to designers at IDEO, Cooper, Jump Associates, Frog and Method to current designers at startups like Path and Flipboard. We're putting our money and attention where our mouth is to help designers make startups that people actually want to use.
Karl Dotter
Conrad Wai
Partners
Friends
Press
How it works
- Apply: Designers can apply for an investment. Note: Our next application period starts December 1st and closes on January 15th.
- Connect: The Designer Fund community then invites select candidates for interviews and hosts an orientation to meet in person in late February.
- Select: Afterwards, personalized investment offers are made by early March ranging from pure mentorship, non-equity grants at a minimum of $5k, angel funding at a minimum of $5k for .5% equity on average, accelerator and seed funding at approximately $50k - $100k+ for 5% - 10% equity on average.
- Build: Starting in March, designers co-work together at the spaces of partners on a bi-monthly basis as a motivation function pushing teams to iterate on product, refine their business, and get market traction. We'll have some public events like the Designer Fair, especially for designers who are seeking co-founders and teammates but we’re cautious about distracting startups with too many events especially if they're participating in an accelerator. Also by this time, designers may want to convert their mentors to become formal advisors for around .5% equity.
- Demo: Finally, designers showcase their progress towards meaningful impact at Demo Days to hundreds of investors if they're participating in an accelerator. We'll also host private demos with our co-investment partners along with public expos to help designer founders get what they need. But really, that’s just the beginning- The Designer Fund community continues to help designer founders as their companies evolve and our network grows stronger as alumni give back...
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