The Design VC

Andy Budd
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The Design VC is a podcast about the intersection of creativity and capital — and how design can help early-stage startups turn vision into traction. Each week, I talk with founders, investors, and founding designers about the decisions that shape the hunt for product–market fit: when to bring design in, what to look for in a great founding designer, and how design helps you earn traction (not just attention) by getting what you’re building into the hands of customers faster. We get practical about the questions founders actually have. When should I hire a designer? What value can design bring before you’ve nailed the product? How do you use design to sharpen positioning, improve onboarding, and increase activation — not just make things look nicer? Along the way, you’ll hear how investors think about design as a signal and a competitive edge, and how the best teams navigate the trade-offs — speed versus craft, instinct versus evidence, product versus story. Hosted by Andy Budd, designer-turned-VC and author of The Growth Equation. If you’re building an early-stage startup and trying to find product–market fit, this podcast will help you make smarter calls earlier.

Episodes

  1. 11 HR AGO

    Ben Blumenrose (Designer Fund): When Design Is the Operating System, Not the Paint Job

    In this episode of The Design VC, Andy Budd talks with Ben Blumenrose, co-founder and managing partner of Designer Fund, about what it really looks like when design becomes the organising principle, not the garnish. Ben takes us back to the early Facebook years, when design was scarce, prized, and oddly powerful. He shares the behind-the-scenes reality that surprises most people: a tiny design team in a sea of engineers, a founder who wanted everything designed, and a culture where designers weren’t an afterthought, they were part of the release valve. Along the way, there’s a great detour into talent density, belonging, and why early Facebook felt like the nerds had finally inherited the earth.From there, the conversation pivots to why Ben left what sounded like a dream job to start a venture fund. Not because “design is important” in the abstract, but because he kept seeing companies building entire products and organisations without an “architect”, then wondering why they didn’t work. Ben unpacks what Designer Fund is really optimised for, why design-led investing hasn’t become the norm, and why angel investing is often a better fit for designers than managing a full VC fund.They also dig into the patterns Ben sees in designer founders: the pull towards preciousness, the shock of founder life (fires, people problems, and endless trade-offs), and the moment you realise that “best product” doesn’t automatically win without distribution, story, and marketing.The episode closes with a clear-eyed take on AI. Ben explains why AI products can look like magic at first glance, but investing (and building) now requires a deeper kind of diligence: where is “pretty good” acceptable, and where does 95% accuracy become a deal-breaker?

    1h 5m

  2. 12 FEB

    Sam Stevenson: How Granola Won the Crowded AI Notes Market, Then Pulled Off a Bold Rebrand

    In this week’s episode of The Design VC, Andy Budd sits down with Sam Stevenson, designer-turned co-founder of Granola, “the AI notepad built for people in back-to-back meetings.” Granola didn’t launch into an empty market. It launched into a red ocean of AI note-taking and meeting summary apps, and still managed to break out. Sam shares where the idea came from, what he noticed that others missed, and the product and UX bets that helped Granola stand out from day one. They also get into the uncomfortable bits: what it’s like raising money when your edge is product and design, the early challenge of building without a technical co-founder, and the decisions that pushed them closer to product–market fit. Sam unpacks one of the team’s most important reversals too, explaining why live, real-time AI notes sounded great in theory but turned out to be more distracting than helpful. The episode closes with a timely look at Granola’s recent rebrand: what prompted it, how they approached it, and what it feels like changing the look of something users already love. A smart, grounded listen for early-stage founders navigating product, fundraising, and growth, and for designers curious about making the leap into founding, especially in AI.

    51 min

  3. 21 JAN

    Kate Aronowitz (GV): The Real Work Between Funding and Product–Market Fit

    A lot of early-stage problems don’t look like “design problems” at first. They look like confusion. Misalignment. A story that isn’t landing. A team shipping hard but not getting traction. In this episode I’m joined by Kate Aronowitz, a design and product leader who’s worked at eBay, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and now supports founders from inside GV. We talk about what portfolio support actually looks like when it’s done well. Kate describes it as a little like being an agency that gets invited in, except the incentives are completely different. She isn’t selling hours. She’s there to help founders make progress on the things that are hard to see from the inside, and hard to talk about when the stakes are high. Kate shares what she tends to notice across companies, especially the gap between what gets reported and what’s really happening. Team dynamics, organisational friction, and the subtle ways a product story can drift until nobody can explain it simply anymore. We also touch on why brand is starting to matter more again, and what she’s seeing from teams who get it right early. If you’re building a startup and want a more honest view of what “help” can look like beyond generic advice, this episode is a rare look behind the curtain.

    51 min

  4. 21 JAN

    Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky: From Google Ventures to Character VC (and Making Better Bets Faster)

    Most startups don’t fail because the team can’t build. They fail because they can’t decide what to build, and they waste months proving it the slow way. In this episode I’m joined by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, best known for popularising and codifying the Design Sprint process through their work at Google Ventures, and subsequently their books Sprint, Make Time, and most recently Click. We talk about the scrappy reality behind the sprint. Not “a workshop”, but a pressure-tested way to cut through endless debate, force clarity, and end the week with something you can put in front of real people. They share what it was like parachuting into fast-moving startups at GV, helping teams go from a messy problem to a prototype and honest feedback in days, and why that pace changes the quality of decisions you make. We also get into what they’re doing now with Character, including Character Labs, and why they believe the same decision-making discipline matters just as much at the investing stage as it does inside the product team. If you’re pre-PMF, stuck in opinion loops, or trying to find a reliable way to turn uncertainty into momentum, this one is full of practical signal.

    1h 7m

  5. 21 JAN

    Des Traynor (Intercom): Design, PMF, and What Founders Get Wrong Early

    Intercom didn’t start as Intercom. In this first episode of The Design VC, Des Traynor takes us back to the scrappy days of running a design consultancy with a side project, and the moment a tiny in-app message, a speech bubble popping out of a star in the corner of the UI, hinted at something bigger than the product it was built for. That small interaction became the seed of Intercom’s now-ubiquitous in-app messenger, and eventually a company that reshaped how startups communicate with customers. We talk about what it really takes to get from “this seems cool” to “this is working”. How they used their existing network to get early traction, why direct, human outreach still beats automated growth theatre, and what made the early pitch of “talking to your customers inside the product”, so compelling that people immediately wanted in. Then we fast-forward to the second act. Des shares what it’s like when a new platform shift forces you to re-think your product strategy in public. We talk about the internal debate that led Intercom to go all-in on AI, how the team navigated the risk of a major pivot, and what founders often underestimate when they try to ship AI features into a product that already has paying customers and a reputation to protect. It’s a candid conversation about the messy sequencing of product, story, distribution, and belief, and how to spot the signals that you’ve found a real wedge, and when you need to reinvent it.

    1h 9m
  • 5 Episodes

About

The Design VC is a podcast about the intersection of creativity and capital — and how design can help early-stage startups turn vision into traction. Each week, I talk with founders, investors, and founding designers about the decisions that shape the hunt for product–market fit: when to bring design in, what to look for in a great founding designer, and how design helps you earn traction (not just attention) by getting what you’re building into the hands of customers faster. We get practical about the questions founders actually have. When should I hire a designer? What value can design bring before you’ve nailed the product? How do you use design to sharpen positioning, improve onboarding, and increase activation — not just make things look nicer? Along the way, you’ll hear how investors think about design as a signal and a competitive edge, and how the best teams navigate the trade-offs — speed versus craft, instinct versus evidence, product versus story. Hosted by Andy Budd, designer-turned-VC and author of The Growth Equation. If you’re building an early-stage startup and trying to find product–market fit, this podcast will help you make smarter calls earlier.

Information

  • Creator
    Andy Budd
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Andy Budd
  • Provider