20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund

Ben Blumenfeld is the Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund, they invest in startups co-founded by designers and build and educate design teams through their program, Bridge. Designer Fund's portfolio includes the likes of Gusto, Stripe, Shyp, Operator and many more incredible companies. As for Ben, previously Ben was a design lead at Facebook for over 5 years where he helped build products for nearly a billion people and grow Facebook’s world-class design team. He was also the design director at Varien which he helped build into one of the world’s leading e-commerce firms. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ben made the move from designer to General Partner @ Designer Fund? 2.) How does Ben's design background inform how he invests in companies and then supports them post-investment? How does he evaluate design opportunities from the design perspective? 3.) Why now has design become such a competitive advantage in tech? What has changed? What are the fundamentals of beautifully designed products today? 4.) How does Ben believe the current crop of VCs view design? What do they not understand? What should they look to understand? Will we see a new class of design-centric VCs? 5.) From seeing the likes of Facebook, Medium and Asana scale deign teams, what have been the takeaways to effectively scaling design teams with the growth of an organisation? What is required for this to be successful? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Ben’s Fave Book: The Power of One Ben's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Social Snippets, Charles Hudson @ Precursor Ben’s Most Recent Investment: Hustle As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ben on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website, engage current users with targeted messages based on their behavior, and provide personal support at scale with an integrated help desk and knowledge base. This is perfect for Businesses that want to help people visiting their website become customers. Marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right time and Support teams that want to move beyond email to provide personalized, scalable support so simply head over to Intercom.com/20MVC Cooley are the global law firm built around startups and venture capital.  Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50+ years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad issues that arise through a fund’s lifetime. So to learn more about the #1 most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Head over to cooley.com and also at cooleygo.com.

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