Applications Open for Designer Fund Partnership
$500K investment, design support, and community
We’re excited to announce Designer Fund Partnership, the best $500K investment and design support offer for early stage startups. We help you hire and manage exceptional design teams, provide expert product and brand design advice, accelerate your fundraising process and connect you to our community of top designers, founders, and advisors. Designer Fund Partnership applications are now closed. Learn more here.
Design for good
Building on the momentum of last year’s Fund III launch, we’re deepening our commitment to use design to improve the world. We’re looking for early stage companies, Pre-seed to Series A, that use design to improve health, prosperity, and sustainability for all.
- Health: Increase wellbeing by preventing disease and improving the cost and delivery of care.
- Sustainability: Replace legacy and harmful products with more efficient and renewable solutions.
- Prosperity: Create pathways, tools and infrastructure to give more people access to economic growth.
Partner with us
We have flexible ownership terms and can invest in rounds alongside angels, accelerators, seed funds and VCs. Depending on your stage, traction, and funding to date, we can adjust our investment terms. We don’t have a program or curriculum you have to follow. We focus on monthly design help tailored to what you need most, including:
- Kickoff: We start with an onboarding meeting to better understand your milestones for the next year and how we can best help you accomplish them.
- Hiring: We assess your design hiring needs, recommend curated contractors and full-time design talent, and participate in your interview process.
- Design management: As you hire a team, we can coach them to overcome challenges while scaling high-performing design teams.
- Design advice: We host office hours to provide feedback on your product, brand and how to use design strategically across your business.
- Community: We connect you to design leaders, founders, and advisors in our community for specific expertise via the private Designer Fund Collective workspace and invite you to members-only events and trainings.
- Fundraising support: We make warm introductions to potential customers and value-add investors, hone your pitch, and develop an outreach plan.
Testimonials from our community members
Designer Fund has been one of our earliest backers and helped us raise our seed round. They've built one of the most supportive design communities and networks that you should want on your cap table.Sofya Polyakov, CEO and Co-founder of Noun Project
At Lumen, the high art of product is making a very complex journey simple and delightful for our customers. At one point we got stuck. The product strategy session with Designer Fund was an espresso shot of insight, revealing points of confusion easily reconfigured, and an entirely new perspective on how to design the customer journey.Peter Light, CEO and Co-founder of Lumen Energy
Over the years, Designer Fund has offered multiple programs—mentoring startup founders, assisting ICs in transitioning into management roles, and even providing a platform to discuss angel investing as a designer. With their help, I’ve grown from being a new grad to a design lead and now a founder. I’m looking forward to another decade of inspiration.Effy Zhang, CEO and Co-founder of baserun.ai
Designer Fund has the improbable combination of a team of truly wonderful humans multiplied by a pioneering approach to venture.Jason Marder, Independent Design Director
