One of my first projects was designing those little emoticons that turn sideways. Back then, did you work on any products people would know or use?īraden: Yeah, I started on Gmail chat. We all sat in one place.ĭes: Wow, that’s cool. I remember back when there was only a couple of designers. I presume you were in Google beforehand, is that right?īraden: Yes, I’ll be at Google for 10 years now in September. But they’re still a little bit in the dark if they’ve never worked with design, particularly at the core of their business, like figuring out what the product is.ĭes (right) and Braden recording at Google Venturesĭes: You didn’t start in a design role at Google Venture. Now fast forward to today they really believe it, and they need it, and it’s a serious thing that they need to figure out. Actually, I think five years ago, they heard design was important but they didn’t quite believe it. Originally when I started in this, founders knew design was important, but they weren’t quite sure how to get it. Irene Au is at Khosla, John Maeda is at Kleiner Perkins and there’s a couple of other firms that have hired full-time designers.ĭes: Is this an acknowledgment by VC firms that design has massive multiplicative value for companies?īraden: I think so. I got into it about five years ago, and since then there’s been this run of venture capital funds hiring designers. Design At Startupsĭes: Are venture capital firms hiring designers, is that a thing these days?īraden: It seems to be kind of a trend. Now we try to help in all sorts of ways, but mostly it’s about figuring out how to help the company be good at design or help them understand what design is. I could just go to a company for a month and help them out a bit and then go to the next company for a month, but then it scaled beyond that. At the beginning there there was maybe five companies and that felt pretty easy. There’s five designers on our design team here and 300 startups to help, so we’re pretty busy.ĭes: So you’re just a casual in-house designer for 60 companies, is that it?īraden: Well, we realized pretty early on that we weren’t going to be able to do all the design work for our portfolio. We’ve opened a European fund, and we have over $2 billion under management. We’ve invested in almost 300 companies here in the US. Google Ventures invests in startups all around the ecosystem. I’m a design partner at Google Ventures so my job is basically to help startups build better products. If you’d rather not listen to a podcast, a lightly edited version of the conversation follows below.ĭes: For the sake for our listeners, could you briefly introduce yourself?īraden: Sure. You can subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or over at Soundcloud, or grab the RSS feed, if you’d like to automatically receive new episodes which will feature interviews with our favourite thinkers and do-ers from the startup world. If you like what you hear, check out more episodes. The conversation covered GV’s work with startups, the process of design sprints, sketching and prototyping, and the future of product design. I visited Braden recently at Google Ventures, Google’s independent investment arm, which has backed more than 300 companies including Uber, Nest, Slack, Foundation Medicine, Flatiron Health, and One Medical Group. He brings a unique perspective to his design work having started his career as an engineer – he previously built virtual reality simulators at the Beckman Institute, and interactive visualizations at Lucent Technologies. Before joining Google Ventures, Braden led design for several Google products, including Gmail, Google Apps for Business, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Trends.
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