The premise
Most design work dies in a portfolio.
Every year a few thousand design theses get finished, exhibited, photographed, and put away.
The thesis goes into your portfolio. It gets you the interview. The job at Figma, Adobe, Apple, wherever. Then it's done. The insight, the months of research, the long nights prototyping in the studio: shelved. The prototype worked. The problem was real. None of that mattered once the portfolio did its job.
That's the most wasteful thing in design education, and almost nobody treats it as a problem.
Designers already do the hardest part of building a company. You find a real problem, you sit with the people who have it, and you make something that didn't exist that morning. What's missing is everything that comes after – a customer, a business model, a company, a first check.
We back designers at the point where no one else is paying attention. Not after the company exists. Before it does.
Every year a few thousand design theses get finished, exhibited, photographed, and put away.
The thesis goes into your portfolio. It gets you the interview. The job at Figma, Adobe, Apple, wherever. Then it's done. The insight, the months of research, the long nights prototyping in the studio: shelved. The prototype worked. The problem was real. None of that mattered once the portfolio did its job.
That's the most wasteful thing in design education, and almost nobody treats it as a problem.
Designers already do the hardest part of building a company. You find a real problem, you sit with the people who have it, and you make something that didn't exist that morning. What's missing is everything that comes after – a customer, a business model, a company, a first check.
We back designers at the point where no one else is paying attention. Not after the company exists. Before it does.
The thesis is the company. It just doesn't know it yet.
OUR THESIS
More designers should
be founders.
We fund things nobody asked for yet. If the market already agrees with you, we are late, and so are you. The projects that matter look slightly early and slightly strange, because the person making them saw something first.
We back people over projects. A good thesis paired with someone who stops the moment it's graded is worth nothing. An uneven thesis paired with someone who keeps working after the grade is in is worth everything. So the question we ask is simple:
We fund things nobody asked for yet. If the market already agrees with you, we are late, and so are you. The projects that matter look slightly early and slightly strange, because the person making them saw something first.
We back people over projects. A good thesis paired with someone who stops the moment it's graded is worth nothing. An uneven thesis paired with someone who keeps working after the grade is in is worth everything. So the question we ask is simple:
What have you built that nobody asked you to build?
Building a company is unglamorous, repetitive, and mostly unwitnessed. We're here for the part before anyone is watching.
Building a company is unglamorous, repetitive, and mostly unwitnessed. We're here for the part before anyone is watching.